Book .WV r 

Coppght^°_ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



Caleb Cobweb's 
Comparisons. 

A Book of Modern Parables. 



By 

Amos R. Wells. 



THE McNAIR PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
40 Williston Road, Auburndale. Mass. 
1908. 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

JAN 7 1909 

CLASS CU XXc, No. 

+ D f 5 

*~ COPY 



Copyrighted, 1908, 
by Amos R. Wells. 



Who Is 
Caleb Cobweb"? 



" D R0FESS °R Caleb Cobweb, M. A.," is 
1 an imaginary old gentleman, who 
for years has conducted "The Telephone 
Exchange," a question-and-answer depart- 
ment in the paper of which I am an editor, 
The Christian Endeavor World. It is 
the Professor's amiable custom to indulge 
in a few preliminary observations on any 
subject uppermost in his mind before he 
opens his weekly budget of queries and re- 
plies. He is very fond of drawing analo- 
gies between things material and things 
spiritual, and about seventy of these para- 
bolic discourses make up this little volume. 

Amos R. Wells. 

Auburndale, Massachusetts. 
November 11, 1908. 



Index. 



PAGE. 



Accommodating 106 

Acre Clubs 91 

All from a Rail 76 

Backward Meter, A 78 

Basements 27 

Being a Bee 83 

Body under Garments 97 

Building to the Line 149 

By Contrast 59 

Cat in the Garden, The 118 

Catch Your Bolts 132 

Certain Use for Literature, A 130 

Cost of a Line 25 

Church Bees 122 

Church Invalids' Rooms 95 

Dead Hands at the Wheel 153 

Deadly Dust 35 

Dry Farming 3 

Edible Guide-Rope, An 70 

Electric Switch, An 85 

False Sapphires and True Diamonds .... 81 

Floating Mines 23 

Follow the Steel ! 21 

Getting Down Again 47 

Getting Used to Poisons 128 

Handicapping One's Self 124 



Harmless Duelling? 143 

Holding the Language 134 

How to Lay a Ghost 13 

Illustrating Values 38 

It Is in the Air 93 

Its Heart in Its Song 141 

Language Leave 151 

Life of a Tire, The . 19 

Light All the Jets ! 11 

Living Water 145 

Maimed by Laziness 50 

Move Out 102 

New Filament, A 5 

No One Believed Him 104 

"No Right to Himself" 108 

Physiognomical Hair-Cutting 116 

Pigeon-Hole Snare. The 155 

Platinum Counterfeits 29 

Price of Brains, The 57 

Problem of Smokeless Powder, The .... 63 

Ratskin Lives 17 

Self-Mending Tires 61 

Shah's Telephone. The 15 

Six-O'clock Men 137 

Smokeless Powder 40 

Stand L T p to Your Task 100 

Sticking Out 1 

Strong-Box That Was Too Strong, A... 139 

Surprise Tests 7 

Tested Seed 65 

That Other Shoe 45 



Thirteen Years in Water 72 

Too Many Lights 74 

Trachoma Parable, A 9 

Tragic Fun 33 

Typhoid Factories 42 

Under Cover 113 

Up Close to Your Work 110 

Useful Rubber Stamp, The 67 

Valuable Swords 87 

Value of Rotaries, The 55 

Weight While You Wait 89 

What a Soldier Carries 126 

When "Sprinklers" Do Not Sprinkle... 31 

When You Don't Feel It 147 

Wire-Glass Characters 52 



CALEB COBWEB'S 
COMPARISONS. 



STICKING OUT. 

A queer accident it was, but it hap- 
pened. 

In a town near where I am now writ- 
ing, a freight-car with a broken door 
was moving rapidly past an express pas- 
senger-train going in the other direction. 
The lurching of the freight threw the 
swaying door sharply against the side of 
the passenger-train, and with a swift jerk 
it was torn from its fastenings, and swung 
wildly out. It smashed a window of a 
well-filled coach, and then it took three 
others in its crashing course, till it was 
torn completely off. 

The tearing noise and the flying glass 
frightened the occupants of the car. Sev- 
eral women fainted. One woman was 
taken to the hospital when the train 
reached Boston. There were some narrow 
escapes from serious injury. And all be- 
cause a freight-car door was loose on its 
hinges. 

Ah, my brethren, how many times this 
strange and most unusual accident is du- 
plicated in the hidden affairs of the soul ! 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



For our lives are like express-trains, 
swiftly moving hither and yon, on tracks 
that cross in many intricate ways. It is 
* a wise Signalman, up there in the Tower, 
that keeps us from colliding ! 

But sometimes, though we may not col- 
lide, our doors get off their . hinges, and 
then look out for the flying glass ! "A 
man of angles," we say, meaning that he 
sticks out in just this fashion. "Hard 
to get along with," we say, meaning that 
we can't move along our track without 
being struck by some projecting dis- 
agreeableness. 

My brethren, the longer I live in this 
mixed-up world, the more convinced I am 
that a goodly part of the happiness of 
our mundane existence is due to those 
comfortable folks that quietly keep them- 
selves largely to themselves, "living and 
letting live," as the saying goes. They 
may not push us along our way, but they 
do let us get smoothly by ! 



COMPARISONS 



3 



DRY FARMING. 

Every American should be greatly in- 
terested in the wonderful advance of 
possibilities for the West owing to the dis- 
covery that much of the land heretofore 
thought to be arid can be farmed with 
great profit without irrigation. By "dry 
farming" the wheat belt has already been 
moved into eastern Colorado fairly to the 
foot of the Rockies, and where the line will 
stop no one can predict. These Colorado 
dry lands, that had been thought useless 
except for a little grazing, produced last 
year an average of twenty-five bushels of 
wheat to the acre, thus leading the entire 
country. 

The steam plough is the chief factor in 
the miracle. It will plough, pack, harrow, 
and seed thirty or forty acres a day, at a 
cost, including seed, of less than two dol- 
lars an acre. The ploughing and seeding 
are one operation, so that there is no 
chance for th£ ground to lose what mois- 
ture is in it. Moreover, the modern far- 
mer drives his weeder and harrow without 
compunction through his growing wheat, 
not minding if he does destroy some of the 



4 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



stalks, knowing how necessary it is to 
preserve the moisture by breaking up the 
soil. It is believed that, if the land is 
thus cultivated, at least five hundred mil- 
lion acres of land west of the Missouri 
River, that have been considered arid and 
barren, may be transformed without irri- 
gation into enormously productive wheat- 
fields. 

J want to do this ! 

Not in Colorado, but right here in Mass- 
achusetts. 

Not in soil, but in life. 

For I have a notion that no heart is al- 
together hardened in sin. 

And I have an idea that no fortune is al- 
together arid and barren. 

And I believe that the right kind of 
farming will make even the worst spiritual 
desert blossom as the rose, and the most 
desolate lot bloom like the Garden of Eden. 

There is a Master Farmer. 

Mary, at the sepulchre, thought He was 
the gardener. 

He is the Gardener, but His field, His 
garden, is the world. 

I will go to school to Him. 



COMPARISONS 



5 



A NEW FILAMENT. 

For a long time it has been realized 
that the incandescent electric light 
might be greatly improved if a better 
substance could be found for the filament 
through which the electricity passes. At 
first platinum was used, but that became 
exceedingly expensive, and carbon took its 
place. It is of carbon that the present 
films are made, and its resistance to the 
passage of the current causes the light we 
see. 

Now two wise men of Columbia Univer- 
sity, Professor Parker and Mr. Walter G. 
Clark, after long and patient researches 
extending over seven years, have hit upon 
a common substance which, when used as 
a filament in the incandescent lamp, gives 
a light far more brilliant than the carbon 
film will give. It produces the same 
amount of light with only one-third of 
the power, and it will last two or three 
times as long. It will add much to the 
comfort of life. 

When I heard of this new triumph of 
science, I began to think about the way 
in which the Light of the World gets Him- 



6 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



self manifested to the world. It can only 
be through the filaments of our poor human 
lives. And what wretched material we 
sometimes furnish Him, to be sure ! What 
a miserable, red, dull, and flickering light 
He is able to make through us ! 

The current is here ; there is no ques- 
tion of that. All the dynamos of the uni- 
verse are at our service. There is power 
for the most dazzling illumination, if we 
will only furnish the conduit. 

"The Light of the World"! Why, the 
world has, as yet, no idea what that is. 
Just as, in the days of the tallow candle, 
they had no conception of the brilliancy of 
our present illuminations, and as we, no 
doubt, would be equally astonished if we 
could have a glimpse of the glittering 
homes of the year 2000 A. D., so the world 
is still in the dark as to what Christ could 
do through fully consecrated churches and 
nations. 

Wanted, New Filaments ! Who will 
meet the demand? Who will make a be- 
ginning in his own life? Who will let 
his light so shine that men may glorify his 
Father in heaven? 



COMPARISONS 



SURPRISE TESTS. 

When a railroad sets down its iron 
foot, affairs generally go according 
to its desires. Not the most elaborate sys- 
tem of "block signals" will provide safety 
for passengers unless the signals are 
obeyed ; but when the railroad officials 
make up their minds to have them obeyed, 
they arc. 

These remarks are illustrated by the 
recently published results of some tests 
which the Chicago and Northwestern 
Railroad made during the past year. 
These were surprise tests ; that is, no one 
but the managers knew that a test of effi- 
ciency and obedience was being made at 
any time. And the number of the tests 
was 1,625. 

Every test teas successful. Every sig- 
nal was obeyed. Not a red light was dis- 
regarded. Not a signal was misunder- 
stood. Not an order but was carried out. 
The grade was lflO per cent. 

And the reason? 

Severity in some tests that had preceded. 
Carelessness was discovered by those sur- 
prise tests, and the careless engineers were 



8 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



promptly taken to task. "It is not your 
fault," they were told, "that a terrible ac- 
cident has not occurred in each case of 
negligence. If the conditions had actu- 
ally been what the signals indicated, no 
power could have prevented fearful disas- 
ters." Ten engineers were dismissed. It 
was made perfectly plain that failure to 
observe signals and obey them meant the 
loss of situations. And that is why those 
1,625 surprise tests did not in a single in- 
stance catch the engineers napping. The 
matter had been brought home to them. 

And now, beloved, our lives are one long 
series of surprise tests. The signals of 
warning are set, red and glaring, right 
along our way. Shall we run by them? 
Ah, through carelessness or blear-eyed 
stupidity, how often we do run by them ! 

Well for us if the great General Manager 
of life's railroad takes us in hand. Well 
for us if He metes out any penalty, how- 
ever severe. Let Him "lay us off," on 
sick-beds, perhaps, or with our hands fet- 
tered by poverty. It is far better — 
anything is far better — than the horrid 
crash at midnight, the burst of steam, the 
blaze of flame, the groans of death, and 
the ruin and shame that never end. 

That never end ; for, unlike every other 
road on earth, this railroad of life has no 
"terminal." 



COMPARISONS 



9 



A TRACHOMA PARABLE. 

Miriam Zartarian is a pleasant-faced, 
attractive young Armenian girl, who 
was kept in the detention-pen of the Bos- 
ton Immigration Station for nearly two 
years. What was the cause of this long 
imprisonment? That disease of the eyes, 
trachoma, which is so properly dreaded in 
this country that those afflicted with it are 
not permitted to land. Miriam was a vic- 
tim of the disease, but she could not be 
sent back to Turkey because her parents 
lived in Boston, and she was coming over 
to them. 

Well, for two years Uncle Sam has been 
a foster father to this Armenian girl, and 
you may be sure she has had the best of 
care. She came to love the immigration 
officials and the attendants at the station, 
and they came to love her. At last it was 
thought that her eyes were cured. A medi- 
cal board of special inquiry was constituted 
by the Washington authorities. The news- 
papers aroused public interest in her case, 
and the verdict was eagerly awaited. At 
last a telegram was received bearing the 
good news from Secretary Straus. The 



10 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



Armenian captive was free, and all Boston 
rejoiced. 

Now I see in this incident a striking il- 
lustration of the conditions that bar souls 
from heaven. There is only one prohibi- 
tion, only one thing that cannot enter 
there, — the terrible disease of sin. 

No one charges the government of the 
United States with tyranny because it for- 
bids the coming of trachoma. The law is 
reasonable and necessary. The people 
would insist upon such a law if there were 
none. It is even more reasonable and 
necessary that sin should be shut out of 
heaven. Sin is a disease far worse than 
trachoma. It is more contagious. It is 
more hurtful. Heaven would not be heaven 
if it were admitted. 

And, just as all Boston was glad when 
Miriam Zartarian's eyes grew better so 
that she could come in, so there is joy 
among the angels of God when one sinner 
repents, and enters into the blessed citizen- 
ship of heaven. Whether admitted or ex- 
cluded, it is all of righteousness and it is 
all of love. 



COMPARISONS 



11 



LIGHT ALL THE JETS! 

Ihave in my study a gas stove with 
seven or eight burners, these burners 
being merely holes in a horizontal gas 
pipe. When I let on the gas, turning the 
"spreader" over the pipe, and then light 
one end, the flame flies from one jet to 
the next, till in a flash they are all lighted. 

All, that is, but the last one. Sometimes 
that does not catch the flame at once, and 
I must wait a minute until it does, be- 
fore turning down the "spreader." 

Once, in my hurry, I did not do this, 
but hastened to my desk, not noticing that 
the last hole in the pipe was still dark. I 
went to work, and was soon absorbed in 
my task. It was winter, and the windows 
were shut ; also, the door. 

In about half an hour some good angel — 
I believe in angels, and that they do not 
stay up in heaven all the time — aroused 
me to what was going on. It was not an 
instant too soon, for I was nearly asphyx- 
iated. I staggered to the stove and turned 
off the gas ; to the door, and opened it ; to 
the window, and pulled it down. It was a 
long time before my head was steady again. 



12 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



The episode taught me a lesson, you may 
be sure. Several lessons, one of them be- 
ing to be in less of a hurry. But chiefly, 
to light all the jets. 

Yes, and all the jets in my life as well 
as in my house. For whatever energy is 
given me, to heat and light withal, becomes 
poison if it is allowed to escape dark and 
cold. Turn it to some good purpose ! 
Your conviction, my soul ! Your zeal, your 
holy ambition, your prayers ! They are 
not given thee merely to escape into thin 
air. Thus escaping, they will fill that air 
with death. Put them to service ! Apply 
the match of decision ! Light every jet ! 



COMPARISONS 



13 



HOW TO LAY A GHOST. 

Scotland possesses many a haunted 
house and many a ghost-inhabited 
apartment. A story is told of a guest who 
arrived at one of these spectre-favored 
abodes so late at night that he was placed 
in the only room that was ready, the 
haunted chamber. 

He pooh-poohed the story of a ghost, and 
gladly took the accommodations offered 
him ; but when he put out his light, his 
courage went out with it. Oo-oo-oo ! Any- 
thing was possible in that blackness. He 
rose, found his revolver, and put it under 
his pillow. Ghosts may not mind bullets, 
but the feel of the handle was comfort- 
ing. So he fell into uneasy slumber. 

At midnight he awoke. Perhaps a ray 
of moonlight fell across his eyes. Perhaps 
it was the solemn strokes of the clock, pro- 
claiming the hour. At any rate — hor- 
rors ! — he beheld a great, fat, white HAND 
at the end of his bed. 

He lay paralyzed with terror. At last, 
he reached tremblingly under his pillow, 
pulled out the pistol, clinched his teeth, 
and fired at the ghostly hand. Then he 



14 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



gave a howl that woke the household. He 
had shot off two of his own toes. 

Believe the story or not, — / believe it, — 
yet you may learn from it a useful fact 
or two about ghosts. They are always a 
bed's length away. And the covers are al- 
ways short. If you want to demonstrate 
their reality, — Fire! 

In other words, the various spectres that 
afright our souls, the hob-goblin fears and 
worries and dreads that are the nightmares 
of our lives, originate with ourselves ; they 
are our selves. Keep in touch with your- 
self, learn to recognize yourself to the far- 
thest toe-reach of your fancy, and you will 
laugh all the spooks off the premises. And 
if you don't, — then hobble around as best 
you can on the few toes you will have left ! 



COMPARISONS 



15 



THE SHAH'S TELEPHONE. 

Persia is not a country to which one 
would naturally look for improved 
modes of government, and for advanced 
applications of modern inventions ; but 
certainly both of those discoveries are to be 
made in a little piece of news that has just 
come from Teheran by way of a leading 
London newspaper. The paper's corre- 
spondent telegraphs that the subjects of 
the new Shah have complained of the diffi- 
culty of bringing their complaints, accord- 
ing to the free-and-easy custom of the Ori- 
ent, directly to the attention of his maj- 
esty. There are too many court officers, it 
seems, and they stand officiously in the 
way. 

Well, what has the Shah done? He has 
actually caused a telephone to be set up 
in a public square in his capital, and he 
has invited his subjects to use it as a 
means of getting into direct communication 
with himself. By this ingenious contriv- 
ance he combines aristocratic seclusion 
with a democracy surpassing an American 
President's; and, moreover, he is safe from 
the dagger of the most enterprising as- 



16 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



sassin. We commend the idea to the Czar 
of All the Russias. 

But aside from the political reflections 
that arise, what a superb illustration is 
all this of the religious fact of prayer ! 
There are many officious personages that 
try to get in our way when we would ap- 
proach the King of Kings. "You must 
pass in your message through us," say 
priest and Pope, and all that harbor their 
spirit. ''You must use the regular service 
of the post-office, with a postage-stamp of 
the right design and color," says the legal- 
ist. "You must wear such a dress, and 
use precisely such ceremonies," says the 
formalist. 

But the King waves them all aside. In 
the market-place, in the shop, in the fields, 
at the church door, in the cheapest pew, 
in the lonely sick-room or the crowded 
streets He has set up His telephone 
booths. There is no exchange : the wire is 
direct. It rises straight to the council 
chamber of the Most High. It is attached 
to the Throne of the universe. And every 
word you whisper is heard by the King 
Himself, who, hearing, makes reply. 



COMPARISONS 



17 



RAT SKIN LIVES. 

A GLOVE-MANUFACTURER Was showing 
a customer a handsome pair of 
brown gloves. They looked fine and soft 
and valuable, but the customer was bidden 
to examine them more carefully. Then he 
saw that they were covered with many 
little scars and scratches, which were 
quite certain to weaken the skin, and 
which rendered the gloves of very little 
value. 

The gloves, it was explained, were 
made of ratskin ; and ratskin was always 
affected in that way, because rats fight so 
much. Their much-scarred skin is 
therefore of little use for glove-making, 
though otherwise it might be quite valu- 
able. 

The point of comparison is not far to 
seek. Doubtless you know, as I certainly 
do, some of those pugnacious men and 
women whose minds and souls are scarred 
all over with the marks of innumerable 
combats. They have gone through life 
with big chips on both shoulders. When 
no one else would knock them off, they 
have done it themselves. Debates have 



18 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



dislocated their days and quarrels have 
torn their lives asunder. They have no 
friendship that is not rent in gaping spots, 
and ever-new disputes keep the old scars 
open and add fresh ones. 

Nothing fine or even useful can be 
made from such lives. They are merely 
tolerated. The necessary attitude of the 
world toward them is one of pity, indiffer- 
ence, or sad repulse. And thus arise still 
other scars. 

Oh, how they need that "preparation of 
the gospel of peace," wherewith not only 
their feet may be shod, but their hands, 
and their entire being ! 



COMPARISONS 



19 



THE LIFE OF A TIRE. 

AN automobile tire is "calculated" to 
run 3,500 miles before it is useless, 
and the manufacturer will guarantee it for 
that run. As a matter of fact, very few 
drivers get 3,500 miles out of a tire. Some 
will get 4,000 miles ; most, hardly 2,000. 

The tire is injured by light, heat, and 
oil. Of course, a piece of broken glass is 
its deadly foe. But of all its enemies the 
worst is a careless driver. 

If the driver takes curves at the top 
speed, and makes sudden twists in his 
course, and applies the brakes perempt- 
orily without slackening motion, thus mak- 
ing the tires grind and slide along instead 
of rolling as they should, he will not get 
half so long service from those expensive 
tubes as a more considerate driver. As 
an illustration of this the case is given of 
a race in which two drivers took machines 
of the same type at the same speed over 
the same course, and while one wore out 
thirteen castings in the operation, the more 
careful man wore out only two. 

Now it is just the same with our human 
machines. 



20 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



Why is it that one man is strong and 
chipper at seventy while another is a groan- 
ing old man at fifty? Inherited maladies 
account for part of the difference, of course, 
but most of it is due to the men themselves. 

One of them knew how to drive his life- 
machine, and the other did not ; or, if he 
did, he disregarded his knowledge. One 
went prudently through life, kept up a steady 
gait, allowed himself no excesses, took no 
sudden starts, no abrupt turns, and never 
had occasion to put the brakes down hard. 
The other had gone slamming through life, 
scorching as he pleased, throwing his 
machine recklessly from side to side, and 
alternating insane spurts of speed with ex- 
pensive though sadly necessary appliance 
of the brakes. 

"Threescore years and ten" — for that 
long, at least, these life-machines of ours 
should run, smoothly, vigorously, enjoyably. 
In most cases, if they must go to the re- 
pair-shop or the junk-shop much before 
that, it is because some one has sinned. 



COMPARISONS 



21 



FOLLOW THE STEEL! 

Do you know what "following the steel" 
is? This is the meaning. 
In putting up one of our immense mod- 
ern office buildings, the first task, of course, 
and generally the most difficult and long- 
drawn-out task, is to make a good founda- 
tion. After this the steel framework of the 
structure is erected. As it is swung into 
place, great piece after piece, the riveters 
follow fast, and bind all parts firmly to- 
gether. Up goes the big skeleton, story 
after story, till it towers in the air as high 
as Bunker Hill Monument, to adopt a 
Bostonian superlative. 

But as fast as the steel rises, the fire- 
proof tiling may be laid, and the brick or 
stone may be built up to fill the sides of the 
monster cube and shut in from the world 
its scores of compartments. That is "fol- 
lowing the steel,' , when tile-workers and 
bricklayers and stone-masons keep close on 
the heels of the steel-men, and rise into the 
clouds only a little behind them. And 
nowadays a twenty-five-story building can 
be erected in three months. 

Well, that would seem to be enough, but 



22 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



I am not satisfied to stop there. I would 
have men "follow the steel," not only in 
literal building, but in that even more sub- 
stantial building we call life. 

For the framework of our life is supplied 
us. It is the circumstances in which we 
are set. our friends, our fortune, our op- 
portunities, and our powers. It is put to- 
gether by unseen workmen, piece after 
piece rising rapidly before us. Every day 
new tasks. Every hour fresh powers. At 
every turn some opening opportunity. 

Follow the steel! 

Follow it closely, not letting yourself fall 
a day behind. A day behind is a yawning 
gulf, almost impossible to fill. 

Follow it blithely, a light in your eye, 
a song on your lips, good cheer in your 
heart. 

Follow it with your best, and all of your 
best. Build in the material laid ready to 
your hand. Build it fair and firm. Build 
it straight and true. Build it so that it 
will stand inspection. 

And so follow that when at last, the 
steel all up, you are ready to "bring forth 
the top-stone with shoutings," you may re- 
ceive and deserve the applauding cry, 
"Grace, grace unto ft!" 



COMPARISONS 



23 



FLOATING MINES. 

Do you remember the anxious time that 
ships' captains had — those, I mean, 
that were bound for China, Japan, Korea, 
or anywhere near — just after the Japan- 
Russia war? For floating mines had been 
strewn along those coasts with a liberal 
hand, and it was known that some of 
them — no one knew how many — had broken 
their moorings and were ranging the seas, 
portents of death for the ill-fated vessels 
that came in their way. It is a wonder 
that more great ships have not been thus 
destroyed by accidental contact with stray 
mines. Doubtless before another war (God 
grant there never may be another war ! ) 
some international arrangement will re- 
strict or abolish this peril. 

But there is another kind of floating 
mine that cannot be abolished so easily. 
Very likely you have struck many of the 
mines I mean in your own sailing along 
the ocean of life. 

You will be talking innocently and gayly 
in a mixed assembly when suddenly a 
change will come over the company. Faces 
will look horrified. Others will look 
amused. Others will look sorry or angry 



24 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



or perplexed. All brightness has left the 
scene. And the transformation was in- 
stantaneous. 

What have you done? You have struck 
a loose, floating mine. 

In other words, you have hurt some 
one's feelings. You have stumbled upon 
the theme of a neighborhood quarrel, per- 
haps. Or, you have offended some one who 
is notoriously over-sensitive or prejudiced 
on some point. Altogether unconsciously, 
you have "put your foot in it." And the 
4, it" is something that should never have 
been in the way of your foot, or any foot. 

Brethren, let us ignore these floating 
mines of the ocean of life. You can't ig- 
nore the Japanese kind, but these are de- 
stroyed only by disregarding them. Do not 
be easily offended yourself, and do not pay 
much attention to the supersensitiveness 
of others. Let a cheerful good sense free 
the high seas of conversation from these 
explosive and mischievous traps. 



COMPARISONS 



25 



THE COST OF A LINE. 

IN the famous little town of Plymouth, 
Mass., they are having trouble as I 
write. They have been voting on the ques- 
tion of license or no-license, as every 
Massachusetts town must vote, once a 
year ; and a grand good custom it is, too. 

But this year the balloting must be done 
over again. This is because 638 ballots 
were cast in the affirmative, 637 in the 
negative, and 36 were blank. That was so 
close that a more careful scrutiny was 
made, and it was discovered that one man 
had marked his ballot at that place with 
a mere diagonal, instead of the cross which 
he had properly used elsewhere in the bal- 
lot. This ballot was thrown out by the 
Supreme Court of the State, and as it was 
an affirmative, the vote was thus reduced 
to a tie, and the work must all be done 
over again. 

Here are 1311 men that must vote over 
again. It will take them, on an average, 
at least half an hour each to do it. That 
will use up 82 eight-hour days, or more 
than a quarter of a year of working time. 
If the time of the average citizen of Ply- 



26 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



mouth is worth, as it certainly is, two dol- 
lars a day, the cost will be $164 for that 
item alone, while the election expenses 
proper will certainly increase the sum to 
$300. 

And all this waste of time and strength 
and money just because one careless fellow 
did not put another diagonal on his cross ! 

The moral sticks out so far that there is 
no need of pushing it farther. If I could 
choose my ways of becoming wealthy, I 
should simply choose to have the riches 
that are wasted all the time by people's 
heedlessness in trifles. I should be a trill- 
ionaire at the very least. 



COMPARISONS 



27 



BASEMENTS. 

Before me lies a very interesting pic- 
ture. It is printed on an envelope 
used by the famous Chicago firm, Marshall 
Field and Company, in delivering their 
goods. It shows a transverse section of 
their great new buildings, from the street 
floor downward. 

First comes the street, with crowds of 
men, horses, carts, carriages, automobiles. 
Below that is the basement salesroom. Be- 
low that is the second-basement shipping- 
room. Still below that, on a level with the 
freight subway, is what is called the sub- 
way floor, with machinery, and much be- 
sides. Below that are the solid concrete 
caissons, enormous pillars that stretch down 
through layers of clay, gravel, and sand, 
till they reach the firm rock one hundred 
and ten feet below the street level. Cer- 
tainly, interesting as is the aerial portion 
of a modern department-store, the subter- 
ranean sections are even more fascinating. 

I have been moved by this picture to 
ask myself and you a very searching ques- 
tion : What is below the street level of our 
lives? 



28 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



There, the show windows may be 
crowded with handsome goods, the aisles 
may be thronged with purchasers, the ele- 
vators may whisk their thousands daily 
tip to six or seven or ten stories full of 
valuable and useful wares. But what is 
below the sidewalk? 

For a life, as well as a store, cannot long 
flourish without basements. What we do 
before men must be carefully prepared out 
of sight of men, or it will not be effective. 
We must study and think more than we 
speak. We must be more than we seem. 
The caissons of our character must go 
down to the bed-rock of principle. The coal- 
bunkers must be full, the furnace must be 
powerful, the elevator machinery must be 
reliable. However much we may sell, our 
business will fail if the shipping-depart- 
ment does not get it to the purchasers. 
Oh, there is much that is of fundamental 
importance going on in the basement of a 
well-ordered life ! 

There are lives that begin with the street 
floor ; and when they become bankrupt, the 
reason is not far to seek. 



COMPARISONS 



29 



PLATINUM COUNTERFEITS. 
ot long ago an English photographer 



pieces of money, a much-worn sovereign. 
He was amazed to find afterwards that he 
had been credited with a guinea. In real- 
ity, the coin was a counterfeit ; but the 
base was of platinum, heavily gilded. Now 
though platinum, at the time when the 
counterfeit was probably made, was worth 
about one-third as much as gold, it is now 
more valuable than the yellow metal. This 
is because so little of it is mined, and there 
is so great use for it in the arts and in- 
dustries. 

It is quite unusual, as will be agreed, 
to find a counterfeit that is more valuable 
than it pretends to be ; but in the domain 
of the spirit this discovery may be made 
all the time. Indeed, spiritual counter- 
feits are always of the platinum variety. 

What I mean is this : that in spiritual 
counterfeiting the counterfeiter gives away 
quite priceless possessions, for which he 
never gets an adequate return. He may 
be counterfeiting piety, or virtue, or love, 
or honesty, or industry. Into every coun- 




among other 



30 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



terfeit he puts his honor, his happiness, his 
self-respect, his hope, his character, and 
his eternal welfare ! 

A valuable coin, that ! No need of gild- 
ing it, surely ! The only difference between 
it and the platinum sovereign is that its 
metal is of use to no one but the counter- 
feiter. But to him, ah, how priceless ! And 
how endlessly foolish is this counterfeit- 
ing in the realm of spiritual realities ! 



COMPARISONS 



31 



WHEN "SPRINKLERS" DO NOT 
SPRINKLE. 

" A utomatic sprinklers" are not always 
l\ automatic. No human contrivance 
can be trusted to take care of itself. The 
most that can be said of the best of them 
is that they will bear watching. 

The automatic sprinkler is, as is com- 
monly known, a series of plugs in a series 
of water-pipes running along the ceilings 
of the "protected" establishment. These 
plugs are made of a metal easily melted 
by a slight heat. When they melt, streams 
of water deluge all below, and put out the 
fire. 

That is, if the water is in the pipes ! 
But within a few weeks, the fires in build- 
ings thus "protected" have caused a loss 
of more than a million dollars, together 
with the loss of a number of lives. 

In one case there was a slight leak in 
a sprinkler, which had led to the shutting 
off of the water-supply till it could be 
mended ; then came the fire. In another 
case, there was a small fire, and the water 
was shut off until new plugs could be in- 
serted ; then came a big fire. And in still 



32 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



another case the water had been shut off 
from the pipes, and no one knew why. 

Ceaseless vigilance is the price of many 
things besides liberty. It is the price of 
safety, the price of prosperity, the price of 
purity, the price of wisdom, the price of 
power. Nothing can be left to run itself. 
Everywhere we need the track-walker, and 
nowhere more than along the rails of hu- 
man life. Everywhere we need inspectors 
and watchmen, and nowhere more than in 
the complicated and dangerous business of 
living. Down through the centuries ring 
the needed words, never more needed than 
now : "Watch ! Watch ! for ye know not 
the day, nor the hour !" 



COMPARISONS 



83 



TRAGIC FUN. 

The newspapers have reported, with all 
its grewsome details, an occurrence 
which, horrible as it is, I shall relate, 
briefly, for the sake of the lesson which it 
so forcibly teaches. 

A laborer, John Douidi, was asleep, at 
4.30 A. M., in front of a furnace in a Pitts- 
burg steel-foundry. A craneman spied him, 
and at once was seized by the thought of a 
huge joke. He told several other workmen 
of his plan, and with many chuckles they 
obtained a five-gallon can of benzine. 

Mounting the travelling crane and mov- 
ing along till he was directly over the 
sleeper, the brilliant joker poured the ben- 
zine upon him. Part of it splashed into 
the furnace, and in an instant Douidi was 
swathed in flames, which burned his body 
to a crisp and killed him immediately. The 
joker, as I write, is fleeing from the officers 
of the law. 

I do not tell this story to shock you, 
though it is one whose horrors do not soon 
fade from the memory. I tell it that you 
may see in it the type of a certain very 
common kind of fun. 



84 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



It is the fun that is wholly absorbed in 
itself, and takes no thought for conse- 
quences. It points a pistol at a timid per- 
son, and "did not know that it was loaded." 
It pulls chairs from under those who are 
about to sit down. In college initiations 
it brands boys and girls for life with fire 
and acids. It trips folks up with stretched 
wires. It enters into realms that are even 
more perilous, and purely for "the fun of 
it" lets loose sly innuendos and sentences 
of double meaning that blast one's reputa- 
tion like the breath of a fiery furnace. 

"I didn't mean any harm. I didn't 
think." Thus the fool excuses himself to 
himself. Not thus, however, do other men 
excuse him ; not thus is he excused by the 
Judge of all. For thoughtless mischief 
springs from thoughtless living, that su- 
premely selfish form of life which is reck- 
less of results if only it has its petty way. 
And such selfishness is a deadly sin. 



COMPARISONS 



35 



DEADLY DUST. 



Londoner once made an estimate — it 



f\ seemed to be made with care — and 
concluded that if the flying of dust in Lon- 
don streets could be prevented, or even 
measurably reduced, a million cases of sick- 
ness would be saved to the community 
every year, and ten thousand deaths, that 
would otherwise occur, would not occur. 
Estimated in money, that would be a sav- 
ing, he reckoned, of at least fifty million 
dollars. 

Now without debating those figures, I 
think we shall all agree — all, at least, who 
know anything about modern discoveries of 
disease germs and their prevalence in 
dust — that the almost constant assaults of 
this dust upon city people is one of the 
most serious menaces to life in our mod- 
ern days. Consumptives, and those suffer- 
ing from other diseases, expectorate in the 
street, and the following day the dried ef- 
fluvia are borne on the lightest breeze into 
fifty lungs. Post-mortem examinations, 
conducted on a large scale in many cities, 
make it certain that few inhabitants of 
cities but have had tuberculosis at some 
time, though most of them have been un- 




36 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



conscious of it. and have had vitality 
enough to expel the dangerous intruders, 
and heal the wounds they have made. 

But with the demolition of old buildings, 
the shaking of rugs, the crowding of cars 
and of public halls, and many other com- 
mon operations of our cities, the unsani- 
tary processes go merrily on. Until we 
wage war with dust and its allies, our 
campaign against the great white plague 
will be a succession of defeats. 

But. important as all this is. I am not 
saying it primarily with a physiological or 
hygienic purpose. Other dust may be 
raised, as deadly as any that may be laid 
by a watering-cart ; and the dust I mean 
cannot be laid by a watering-cart. 

I mean the dust of spiritual friction, the 
dust of debate, the dust of unkind criticism, 
the dust of stinging sarcasm, the dust of 
malicious slander or thoughtless gossip. It 
all swarms with poisonous microbes. 
Rather than live in such dust. I would 
breathe my lungs full of air from a pest- 
house. It would-be better for my bodily 
health, and far more comfortable to my 
soul. 

'There are those who are continually 
kicking up this dust. Avoid them as you 
would the plague. 

And oh. live dustless lives yourselves ! 
Move gently. Speak not raspingly. Judge 
not harshly. Pour oil on the dust that 



COMPARISONS 



37 



others raise. Live such a life, beloved, and 
we shall seek your presence as men go 
with parched and gasping lungs out of a 
fevered city, to breathe the pure and vivify- 
ing air of a mountain-top. 



38 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



ILLUSTRATING VALUES. 
ot long ago this happened in Paris. 



1 \| Some of you have seen those fascin- 
ating stalls of second-hand books that line 
the quays along the Seine. They stretch 
out interminably, boxes and counters 
crowded with old books of all sorts. At 
night, the lids are lowered over them and 
padlocked, and the queer bookstores are 
closed. 

One of the proprietors of -these literary 
establishments had bought at auction a lit- 
tle book of 230 pages. It was the ''Com- 
plete Works" of Jean Devaines, an old-time 
member of the French Academy. He had 
paid one franc for the book, and he offered 
it at five francs. Xo one wanted it. Then 
four francs. Not a nibble. Then the price 
descended to three francs. Still apathy on 
the part of the public. Then two francs 
fifty centimes — half a dollar. And still the 
"Oeuvres Completes" was unappreciated. 

But just then some one read at the In- 
stitute a paper on this Jean Devaines, 
bringing out the facts that only fourteen 
copies of his Complete Works were ever 
printed, and only four of these were known 
to exist. 




COMPARISONS 



39 



Presto ! The price of that little book 
on the quay went up to $50, and a buyer 
was found, at that price, in half a jiffy ! 

Oh, what nonsense is all this ! The writ- 
ings of Jean Devaines were no wiser, not 
a whit, the day after that paper was read 
at the Institute than they were the day be- 
fore. The book was' no more valuable, tak- 
ing value in its strict sense. It was worth 
no more. People were ready to pay more 
for it, that was all. 

Let us not be caught in any such folly. 
The rarity of an estimable thing may prop- 
erly add to its value, but nothing is more 
valuable just because it is rare. A rare 
engraving, or book, or rug may be a good 
investment, just because of its rarity ; but 
if the picture and rug are not beautiful or 
the book wise and entertaining, then in 
buying it you are not buying art or litera- 
ture ; you are dealing in a commodity, pre- 
cisely as a grocer buys sugar or molasses 
or dried beans. 



40 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



SMOKELESS POWDER. 
ne of the notable inventions in the 



\_y grim series that is supposed to be 
making war so terrible that it will be im- 
possible is smokeless powder. The old- 
fashioned powder was in one way a merci- 
ful device. It raised a tremendous cloud, 
so that each set of combatants was speed- 
ily prevented from seeing the other set 
through a thick veil of its own making. A 
blessed halt was necessary ever and anon, 
till the wind bore the clouds away. 

But smokeless powder prevented all that. 
It kept the air clear, so that our side (for 
instance), having located the enemy, could 
fire away at them quite indefinitely with- 
out obscuring their own vision. And the 
enemy would have no smoke whereby to 
discover our batteries. 

Now, however, comes the discovery that 
the flash of smokeless powder may be dis- 
cerned easily through red glass, while the 
other features of the landscape are dimmed 
thereby. The commanding officers have 
now merely to arm their field-glasses with 
red screens, and they can point out the 
sharpshooters before they have done much 




COMPARISONS 



41 



damage. Thus are inventions balanced by 
inventions. 

I am not much interested in the literal 
question of smokeless powder. ( Soon, I 
hope, our friends at The Hague will rele- 
gate all such matters to the dark ages of 
which they are the unworthy survivals. 
What I find of interest is the application 
of all this to the spiritual life. 

For how often we think to use smokeless 
powder in our dealings with our fellow 
men ! We shoot out against our neighbors 
thoughts of envy, of covetousness, of mal- 
ice, and we think that no one sees ; there 
is no smoke from that fire. We pass along 
a bit of gossip or a piece of slander ; but 
it is smokeless powder we are using, and 
we are safe. No one will discover us. 
The ball will speed on its deadly way. 
Happiness will be slain, fortunes will be 
battered down, reputations will be torn to 
pieces by a bursting shell. But no one 
will suspect us. No one will spy us out. 

iAh, there is One to whose vision smoke- 

V—- 7 

less powder is as plainly marked as powder 
that comes out and declares itself openly ! 
There is a Captain on the field that knows 
all secrets, pierces all disguises, perceives 
all ambushes. There is no smokeless pow- 
der in the world of clear seeing where He 
dwells ! 



42 



CALEB COBWEB>$ 



TYPHOID FACTORIES. 

A queer case is reported in the news- 
papers from the Reception Hospital in 
New York City. 

A woman was taken there, a cook, who 
had no typhoid fever, and had not had the 
disease for six years, but who had never- 
theless communicated it, in all probability, 
during those six years, to about twenty- 
five persons. The fever had been observed 
to break out in every family of which she 
became a part, and microscopical examina- 
tion showed that her system is full of the 
germs. She is indeed, what one of the doc- 
tors called her, a living "typhoid factory." 

It is a puzzling case, for the authorities 
do not know what right they have to de- 
tain her. She is not sick, and she has 
done nothing wrong. They propose to de- 
tain her, just the same, until they get those 
typhoid fever germs out of her body ; and 
society will uphold them in their assump- 
tion of authority. 

But what are we to say of those persons 
that go up and down the world sowing 
quite unconsciously, and in a way inno- 
cently, the seeds of trouble that often is 
as bad as typhoid fever? 



COMPARISONS 



48 



There are many varieties of these. 

Some are critics by nature, continually 
seeing what is wrong, though it is only a 
fly-speck, and never seeing the good, though 
it is as big as a mountain. 

Some are despondent by nature, always 
looking on the under side of clouds, and 
emitting clouds from their inner fog when 
the sky is perfectly clear. 

Some are sceptical by nature, full of 
doubts about even the most commonly ad- 
mitted truths, and never stopping to think 
who may be hurt by the expression of those 
doubts. 

Some are misanthropical by nature, cyni- 
cal, suspicious, sarcastic, ready to believe 
the worst about their fellows. 

Some are irritable by nature, magnify- 
ing slights, and imagining them when there 
is nothing to magnify. 

Some — but why go on? The number is 
large and the kinds are varied, and any 
one may lengthen the list from his own dis- 
agreeable experiences. 

"By nature," I have said. But indeed 
I am not so foolish and wicked as to charge 
all this against the God of nature. What- 
ever evil tendencies these men may have in- 
herited, or however unkind may have been 
the circumstances surrounding them, not 
one of them is compelled to keep his nature 
as it is, scattering poisonous germs wher- 
ever he goes. 



44 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



The doctors may be at a loss to get the 
typhoid germs out of that cook's body ; but 
there is a Good Physician of the soul, and 
He is never at a loss. If your "nature" is 
full of these seeds of evil, go to Him, and 
He will cleanse your nature ; nay, He will 
give you a new nature, pure and healthful 
and health-giving like His own. 



COMPARISONS 



45 



THAT OTHER SHOE. 

A certain traveller, arriving at a hotel, 
found it crowded ; the landlord as- 
sured him that not a room was left. 

But the traveller was persistent and des- 
perate. He must find lodging. He urged 
the lateness of the night. He bullied the 
landlord. He threatened him. And at last 
he extorted from him the information that 
two of his rooms were empty. 

These rooms, however, had been paid for 
by an excessively nervous invalid, who 
rented the rooms on both sides of his bed- 
room in order that he might not be dis- 
turbed by noises on either hand. After 
much persuasion, the landlord agreed to 
open one of these to the traveller, who on 
his part agreed to creep into bed in perfect 
stillness. 

Scarcely breathing, our traveller en- 
tered the room and proceeded to disrobe 
with the greatest care. He was getting 
along well, and was congratulating himself 
on his enterprise, when unluckily he 
dropped a shoe. He remained motionless 
for a time ; but, hearing no sound from the 
other side of the partition, he completed 
his undressing, got cautiously into bed, lay 



4 6 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



awake for some time trying to compose 
his strained nerves, and at last was on the 
point of falling soundly asleep. 

Just then came a thud. The invalid had 
jumped out of bed. Then came a furious 
pounding on the door connecting the two 
rooms, while the frantic shout was heard : 
"In heaven's name, do you want to drive 
me crazy? 'When are you going to drop 
that other shoe?" 

This is a ridiculous story, bearing all 
the marks of truth. In spite of its funny 
aspects, however, it teaches a very shrewd 
lesson. 

For how many times we work ourselves 
into a frenzied apprehension of some evil 
that is not on the way ! There have been 
indications of it, very likely. One shoe has 
fallen. There must be another shoe, at 
least, we argue. And we lie there, every 
nerve tense, our ears alert, our heart beat- 
ing fast. The time drags along. Oh. this 
fearful suspense ! We cannot endure it. 
We shall go insane. We — oh. misery ! 

And all the time there is no other shoe 
to fall. 



COMPARISONS 



47 



GETTING DOWN AGAIN. 

Hoeses are very much Tike people. 
For instance, the employees on the 
third floor of a Boston paper-box factory 
were greatly astonished one day when a 
large horse, fully harnessed, walked into 
their room. 

He had just been shod in the street be- 
low, and had taken it into his head to walk 
out, enter the neighboring establishment, 
and walk up two flights of stairs ! 

The problem was how to get the four- 
teen-hundred-pound beast down to the level 
again. He was far too large for the ele- 
vator. 

At last the driver took him by the bridle, 
a rope was tied about his body, and twenty- 
five or thirty men held him back while he 
made a stumbling and precarious journey 
down the way he had come up. 

On the same day, in a suburb of Boston, 
another horse created some amusement at a 
drinking-fountain. He had quenched his 
thirst, but was not quite content with that. 
He backed a little, and then managed to 
lift his front feet into the fountain, where 
he splashed them about with evident enjoy- 



48 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



ment. Here also the problem was to get 
him down again ; and though this was ac- 
complished, it was not an easy matter. 

At my home there is a cat, Topsy by 
name, who was a long time in learning the 
full trick of tree-climbing. He was very 
ambitious, and delighted in scampering up 
all the trees in the neighborhood. More- 
over, he was very timid, and would often 
retreat into those trees to escape hostile 
dogs or cats. But, once up, he could not 
descend. 

There he would remain, sometimes for 
hours, stretched out upon a limb, trembling, 
looking eagerly down upon the desired 
ground, and meowing pitifully. Baskets 
were lifted to him on long poles. He would 
put out his paw and test them. They were 
too shaky for him. Punches with the 
said pole would merely send him further 
up the tree. Usually there was nothing for 
it but to climb after him, and rescue him 
at the peril of his desperate claws. 

And now let all over-ambitious animals 
take warning ! 

Yes, let me myself take warning. 

For how many, many times I have 
sprung up into some tree of lofty endeavor, 
only to find myself "up a tree" in the 
slangy sense of the term ! I have at- 
tempted more than I can carry out. My 
task is too much for my time, or my 
strength, or my wisdom. And I am at my 



COMPARISONS 



40 



wits' ends to know how to climb down 
again. 

For promising is so easy, undertaking is 
so alluring, but fulfilment is so very, very 
hard. 



DO 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



MAIMED BY LAZINESS. 

NE day a revolting sight was to be 



It was a convict, standing on a box in 
the blacksmith shop where hundreds of 
visitors passed by him during the daylight 
hours ; and on his back and also on his 
front was a sign which read : — 

I CUT OFF MY FINGER 
TO GET OUT OF WORK. 



That is just what he had done, and 
his punishment was to stand there, thus 
labelled, until his finger healed. He spent 
about six weeks in that position, a scorn 
and abomination to all who saw him ; for 
who does not despise laziness — in other 
people? 

And yet, as I read of the affair. I 
thought to myself, ''How closely similar 
to what I see around me all the time !" 

For here is a young fellow, able-bodied, 
quick-witted, well-trained : and his fam- 
ily need the money he might earn. But 




State penitentiary. 



COMPARISONS 



51 



when his entrance on some gainful occu- 
pation is suggested, "Oh, I never could do 
that!" says he. "That needs a smarter 
man than I am. My ability, such as I 
have, does not lie in that line." So he 
cuts off his finger to get out of work. 

Yes, and here in the church is a Chris- 
tian of social poise, mental vigor, and 
business success. Some work needs to be 
done. It may be the chairmanship of a 
committee that is vacant, or the Sunday- 
school needs a superintendent, or a new 
deacon is to be elected. Then ensues a 
spasm of modesty. With one slash of the 
depreciatory hatchet, off comes a digit. "I 
never could do that ! Why, it would be 
impossible ! It's altogether out of my 
line !" He has cut off his finger to get 
out of work. 

The world is full of that sort of folk. 
They stay home from meetings, lest they 
be nominated to some office. They hide 
their access of wealth, lest subscription- 
papers find them out. They refuse to cul- 
tivate their powers of noble action be- 
cause they are too sluggish to act. They 
are like the cowards of Civil War times 
who blew off their thumbs that they might 
not be drafted. They are like the Buckeye 
convict who cut off his finger to get out 
of work. 

Pah ! how disgusting all this is — in other 
people ! 



o2 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



WIRE-GLASS CHARACTERS. 

o you know what wire glass is? It 



\ J may be seen in many of the new 
buildings, used in office windows, and es- 
pecially in elevator shafts. In the panes 
of glass, as they are made, are embedded 
wire screens with very coarse mesh. These 
circles of wire are about an inch across. 
One can get accustomed to them so that 
they obstruct the view very slightly. In- 
deed, one hardly realizes that they are 
there. 

And what is the advantage? The ex- 
traordinary toughness the wire imparts to 
the glass. Above all, the safety against 
fire. Insurance companies recognize the 
latter quality by cheerful reductions of the 
premiums upon buildings thus equipped. 

When a swirl of fire strikes against or- 
dinary glass, it cracks and falls out. Then 
the flames sweep through, and the entire 
building is soon gutted. But wire glass 
will hold back flame to the point of 1,700 
degrees Fahrenheit, or even more. It will 
hold back flame until the wire itself is 
melted, and even then a stream of water 




COMPARISONS 



o3 



striking against it will solidify it instantly. 
The glass will crack, but it will not fall 
out. Thus it is that outside windows of 
wire glass may dispense with iron shut- 
ters. They are even better than iron shut- 
ters, for they are more certain to be closed 
at night. 

Now that is the sort of character I 
should like to possess. Clear and trans- 
parent, letting the sunshine through, let- 
ting through the ideas and events of the 
great world outside, hospitable and sweet. 
Firm and tough, tenacious of my own no- 
tions, holding to my own designs, protec- 
tive of my own possessions against the 
fiercest fire-storm of opposing elements. I 
want to combine these two seemingly un- 
friendly qualities. The wire glass shows 
me how they may be combined. 

There is the open window, admitting 
everything, zephyrs and hurricanes, butter- 
flies and bats, fragrance and fire-blasts. 
That is perilous. 

There is the iron-shuttered window, safe 
and secluding, but dark, damp, dingy, and 
horribly gloomy. 

Some lives have one of these and some 
the other. I will have both. I will live 
in the world, but not of the world. I will 
be all things to all men, but I will work 
out my own salvation. I will seek sweet- 
ness and light. I will also seek firmness 



54 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



and strength. It is a new idea in a build- 
ing. I suspect that I shall find it to have 
been a very old idea in the making of a 
soul. 



COMPARISONS 



55 



THE VALUE OF ROT ARIES. 

The old-fashi'onecl way of getting rid of 
snow on railroads was by means of 
the primitive shovel. A storm would send 
every available man out on the road, and 
many were the backaches next day. 

The second step was the early form of 
the snow-plough, a form still in use wher- 
ever the Frost King is not too fierce in his 
operations. It is a wedge-shaped plough, 
which is pushed against the snow by loco- 
motives behind it, and sometimes as many 
as seven locomotives have been hitched in 
line for that purpose. But the engines 
are liable to get off the track, and the 
method is clumsy and inefficient compared 
with the rotary snow-plough, which is the 
latest contrivance. 

This rotary plough may be twelve or 
more feet in diameter. It consists of a 
series of rapidly revolving knife-edged 
scoops, that bore their way through the 
snow and ice and send it from fifty to a 
hundred feet to one side and the other. 
This snow-screw is rotated by its own en- 
gine, and the whole affair is propelled by 
one or two engines behind. It may move 



56 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



from two to twelve miles an hour, and it 
will conquer any snowbank that Boreas 
can heap together. 

This evolution of the snow-plough con- 
tains a hint for all men that are obliged — 
as so many are — to force a way through 
opposing elements in the world. 

You may push against them, ram them, 
propel yourself bluntly and headlong. 
You may get derailed. You may get a 
broken head. The obstructions will very 
likely be rammed out of the way, but it 
will be at great and unnecessary cost. 

Try the rotary motion. Take the hin- 
drances on the flank. A rifled cannon is a 
far more efficient weapon than a battering- 
ram. A billy-goat is not a good model for 
our following. Bluntness is never a vir- 
tue, and it is always expensive. There is a 
better way. 



COMPARISONS 



57 



THE PRICE OF BRAINS. 

A letter I once received from Spring- 
field, Ohio, told me the following 

story. 

While my correspondent was waiting for 
her change at the meat-shop a woman 
came up, and, after inspecting the various 
meats displayed, seriously asked the 
butcher, "How much do you ask for your 
brains?" 

"As I came away," remarked my corre- 
spondent, "I amused myself with specula- 
tions on the possible outcome of such a 
tragedy as seemed impending." 

But brains are sold, and bargains for 
brains are made, in many places besides 
Ohio meat-shops. 

How much do you ask for your brains, 
young man? 

Here is the saloon-keeper, who will pay 
you a few years of half-crazed revelry for 
them. Do you agree? 

Here is Mammon, who will give you a 
bank-book for them, perhaps a book with 
seven figures in a row after a dollar sign. 
Is it a bargain? 

Here is Ambition, who will give you a 



58 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



seat in the legislature or in Congress. 
Make the exchange? 

Here is Sloth, who offers a feather bed 
and a morris-chair. Take 'em? 

You may question some of this. "It 
takes brains," you may say, "to get into 
office or to make money." 

Yes, brains of a certain kind. But do 
you want to sell your brains for that sort 
of work, — money merely for money's sake, 
and power merely for power's sake, with- 
out considering the good you may do with 
the money or the power? 



Ah, but here comes the Maker of brains. 



"How much do you ask for your brains?" 
He inquires. "I will give you wisdom 
(glorified brains), and joy, and honor, and 
friends, and eternal life." 

Will you make the exchange? Is it a 
bargain ? 

There never was a better bargain in all 
the world. 




COMPARISONS 



59 



BY CONTRAST, 

The broom-boy at the barber-shop 
wanted to clean a last-summer's straw 
hat belonging to one of the customers. 

"No," said the customer ; "it's as good 
as new." 

Thereupon the broom-boy quietly hung 
up the debatable article between two straw 
hats of the present season. The contrast 
was astonishing. Grimy and yellow, the 
"good-as-new" straw hat cut a perfectly 
disgraceful figure. 

The customer gave a glance at it, as he 
settled himself in the chair. 

"Here," he said to the sagacious broom- 
boy, "I've changed my mind. You may 
take that hat, and give it a thorough clean- 
ing. Hurry up, now." 

Thereat the broom-boy chuckled, and a 
moral was afforded Caleb Cobweb. 

For it is very easy to be satisfied with 
one's self, in any department of one's life. 
A man goes to pieces so gradually. Souls 
grow grimy so unnoticeably. We started 
out new. Day by day makes little differ- 
ence, — no difference, that we can see. 



60 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



But there is a difference, and a big one, 
unless we keep cleaned up. And if you 
want to know whether you need that 
cleansing or not, first set your life along- 
side the one pure Life, and then stand back 
and look at the two ! 



COMPARISONS 



SELF-MENDING TIRES. 

AN Australian has invented a substance 
that he calls "miraculum." His mod- 
esty was evidently on a vacation when he 
named the compound, and yet it certainly 
possesses wonderfully useful qualities. It 
is to be applied to pneumatic tires to rem- 
edy punctures, and this is the way it 
works : 

It is a semi-liquid, looking like cream, 
and about as thick. It is pumped through 
the valve into the inner tube of the tire, 
and the revolution of the wheel throws it 
in a coat over the inner surface. When 
the tire is punctured it oozes out of the 
opening, solidifies as soon as it reaches the 
air, and behold ! there is no opening. It 
has been tested, and is found to do what 
is claimed for it. 

Now I want some miraculum in all the 
wheels of my life chariot ! I want a good 
supply of it. 

How constantly those tires get punc- 
tured ! Unkind words, malicious sneers, 
hateful slanders, bitter ridicule, foolish 
misunderstandings, angry recriminations — 
all these are strewn along my road, and 
their edges are sharper than ever was 



62 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



broken glass. Bang ! go the tires nearly 
every time I ride out. 

O yes. I patch them up and roll along 
after a fashion. My tires are covered with 
sticking-plaster of every hue. They look 
like veterans of a thousand battles. 

But what I want is no exterior applica- 
tion, but an inner remedy like miraculum. 
I know the name of what I want. It is a 
shorter name, but it means far more. It 
is "love." Love ! Ah. love ! No life 
chariot will be troubled with punctured 
tires when love is used within. It heals 
every thrust, however cruel, and cures 
every wound, often before it is known to 
be a wound. 

(For love suffereth long and is kind. 
Love thinketh no evil. Love is the mi- 
raculum of the soul. 



COMPARISONS 



THE PROBLEM OF SMOKELESS 
POWDER. 

SMOKELESS powder has revolutionized 
the art of gunnery. It has done this 
not only because of the absence of smoke, 
thus enabling the gunner to see his target 
clearly and constantly, but its enormous 
power has greatly increased the range of 
our guns and the accuracy with which they 
may be fired, and the effect of the impact 
when they hit the mark at which they are 
aimed. 

But all of this has not come about with- 
out disadvantages. A modern man-of-war 
is about as dangerous to its occupants in 
time of peace as in the midst of a battle. 
More than one great war-ship during recent 
years has been blown up by the stupendous 
explosion of its powder magazine. The ter- 
rible accidents that have occurred in target 
practice in our own navy are familiar to 
all. 

The fact is that this new agent of de- 
struction, smokeless powder, is a chemical 
compound in a state of unstable equilib- 
rium. Heat is certain to decompose it, 



64 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



with the result of a disastrous explosion. 
But often when it is kept very cold the 
elements of which it is formed are liable 
to separate, with the same terrible result. 
It is possible to keep the magazines cold by 
means of refrigerator plants supplying air 
at a very low temperature, but this chemi- 
cal decomposition has not yet been rem- 
edied, though very likely some day it will 
be. 

What is wanted in all kinds of warfare 
is a powder that combines great energy 
with great stability. 

In all kinds of warfare, I say ; for in 
men, as in this tremendous but risky form 
of matter, those that possess great strength 
and force are only too often in a state of 
unstable equilibrium. They are liable to 
'"go off" at wrong times, and when there is 
no enemy in sight. They do not "keep 
cool." Their impulsive, unexpected ex- 
plosions scatter about them a mass of 
wreckage which, though it is spirit and not 
matter, is quite as ruinous as any that ever 
littered the decks of a war-ship. 

Sometimes — for the secret has been 
found in men though not in things — some- 
times we see great spiritual force united 
with great spiritual stability. And then 
we have a man to whom the world bows 
down. 



COMPARISONS 



65 



TESTED SEED. 

WHAT is a better illustration of the 
"vanity of vanities" than to plant 
seed which never comes up? You have 
bought it with good money. You have 
spent good time and strength in preparing 
the ground, and planting the seed, and 
tending it. And for return you have — the 
same bare ground with which you started. 
Nothing in all the range of human en- 
deavor and failure is more disappointing. 

Now I have been reading the advice of 
a certain professor of agriculture — advice 
which he gave primarily to the farmers of 
Iowa, but it will answer as well for any 
set of seed-sowers. 

Success in farming, he declares, is very 
largely a matter of the wise choice of 
seeds. Test your seeds, he says, if you 
would have good crops. 

For instance, corn. Take seed grown in 
the neighborhood, seed that is used to the 
conditions of soil and climate which it 
will have to meet. Choose well-formed 
and uniform ears. Take six kernels from 
each ear, three from each side — two from 



66 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



the butt, two from the middle, and two 
from the tip. Then plant them and see 
whether they germinate. If they do not, 
throw away that ear. If they do, use it 
for your seed. 

The professor says that choosing the 
seed thus carefully means an increased 
yield of thirty bushels to the acre. On a 
hundred-acre field, he says, the money 
gained would be from $500 to $2,000. The 
testing could be done in a month, and in 
the winter. If he is right, the farmer that 
does not follow his advice will deserve to 
journey "over the hills to the poorhouse." 

And whether he is right or is exaggerat- 
ing, he is absolutely correct when you ap- 
ply the statement to the realm of the spirit. 
The teacher and preacher and writer and 
parent — all that have to do with the in- 
struction of others — and who does not? — 
will double their yield if they are careful 
about their seed. Not the first topic that 
comes to mind, not the first book at hand, 
not the first advice that occurs to you. but 
thought and prayer lavished upon the 
choice of all that is to enter into the 
make-up of immortal souls. 

Oh, it will pay — thirty-fold, sixty-fold, 
an hundred-fold ! 



COMPARISONS 



67 



THE USEFUL RUBBER STAMP. 

GUTENBERG, or Faust, or whoever it 
was that invented the art of printing, 
would have accomplished wonders for the 
human race if he had gone no farther than 
the hand stamp, and the printing-press 
had never appeared. This primitive hand 
stamp is still in use in a multitude of 
ways. There is hardly an office of any kind 
in which it is not employed. 

Watch the baggage-master making out 
the check for your trunk. In front of him 
is a wall full of hooks — scores and scores 
of them, and on every hook a rubber stamp. 
Swiftly and accurately he snatches down 
one after the other, slaps it on the ink-pad 
and then on the ticket, folds up the latter 
and hands it to you, having accomplished 
in a few seconds a large amount of work. 
Look at your check, and you will see 
stamped upon it not only the name of the 
town to which your trunk is to go, but also 
the road it is to take, via the B. G. and 
St. X., the L. M. R., the A. B. C. and D., 
the P. F. Short Line, and perhaps other 



68 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



roads besides. To write all this out would 
have occupied that busy baggage-master 
several minutes. It would have doubled 
his day's work or required the doubling of 
the force of workers. And what is true 
of the baggage-room is true of almost every 
business office in the world. There are few 
time-savers and labor-savers like a rubber 
stamp. 

Now what I want to learn is the use of 
the rubber-stamp principle in my life. 

By the rubber-stamp principle I mean 
the power of doing automatically, or al- 
most automatically, whatever can be done 
in that way. 

Not everything, of course, can be so 
done. Often a very little can be done auto- 
matically. Most matters need the whole 
mind upon them, with all its faculties fully 
alert. But whatever can be done auto- 
matically is so much clear gain. 

It is not laziness ; it is economy. It is 
not a cheap way of doing things, but it is 
actually a better and more accurate way. 
The less you need to employ your brain 
in the non-essentials, — for instance, the 
letters forming the initials of those rail- 
roads marked on your trunk-check, — the 
more of your brain you have left to em- 
ploy on the essentials. 

Here is the great advantage of doing the 
same thing always in the same way. Dress 



COMPARISONS 



in the same way, and dressing becomes an 
automatic process. Take up your work, 
however varied its items, in the same or- 
der. If you are a housewife, sweep your 
rooms in the same order, handle utensils 
and ingredients in the same order, put your 
tools always in the same place — in short, 
whatever you have to do often, do it in a 
uniform way. Thus you will be forming — 
not ruts, for ruts are hindering grooves — 
but iron rails on which the wheels of 
your life will roll smoothly and swiftly 
to the goal you have in view. 

;There is enough in every life that must 
be written out with original and painstak- 
ing care. Whenever you can, use a rub- 
ber stamp. 



70 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



AN EDIBLE GUIDE-ROPE. 

Walter Wellman was not able to 
start for the Pole this year, but he 
will do it next time — unless Peary gets 
ahead of him. Anyway, he contrived a 
balloon with many interesting points. 

One of these ingenious features is the 
guide-rope. It is a rather formidable 
"rope," .being six inches in diameter, and 
130 feet long. It is made of the very 
best leather, covered with steel scales to 
protect it as it glides over the icy ground. 

The peculiar thing about this 130-foot 
serpent is the material with which it is 
stuffed. It is filled with bacon, ships' bis- 
cuit, butter, ham, dried meats, desiccated 
vegetables — a great variety of the very best 
food for use in cold climates. The leather 
and steel of the whole snake weigh only 
260 pounds, while the food stuffing weighs 
1,150 pounds. This is, of course, nothing 
but an auxiliary food supply, and yet it 
may "come in quite handy" some time. 

And that is the sort of contrivance I 
want for my life balloon ! It needs bal- 
last, of course. It needs something analo- 



COMPARISONS 



71 



gous to the guide-rope. It cannot all be 
machinery and gas — an upward pull and 
a forward push, my religion and my labor. 
It must also have play — play to serve as a 
relief from work and keep the too-eager 
spirit from running away with itself, too 
far upward and too fast ahead. O yes, I 
must have some play. 

But the play may be stuffed with food ! 
It may be nutritious ! It need not be 
mere empty sport. It may feed the mind 
and the soul. If it does not, it is no guide- 
rope for a ship that is bound for the Pole ! 



72 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



THIRTEEN YEARS IN WATER. 
' kedekick Schlimme was a stone-mason 



of Brunswick, Germany. In Novem- 



ber, 1894, he fell from a tree, breaking his 
backbone and crushing his spinal cord. The 
lower half of his body was paralyzed, and 
the derangement of the internal organs 
was so great that some of them ceased to 
act. The only way in which the life of 
the unfortunate man could be preserved 
was by keeping him submerged in water 
at a temperature of ninety-four degrees 
Fahrenheit. His body was ingeniously 
supported, and thus surrounded by hot 
water Schlimme felt little or no pain. 

For thirteen long years the patient has 
remained in this bath, and it was only re- 
cently that death released him from his 
watery imprisonment. But he has made 
the best use of those years. He soon be- 
came able to make baskets and articles of 
wire, and cages, and other things, which 
were so well made that they brought large 
prices and found a ready sale. Besides, he 
bred large numbers of canaries. 

I know nothing about the character of 




COMPARISONS 



IB 



the man, but I suspect that he lived in 
the Bath of Contentment ; or perhaps it 
would be better to call it the Bath of 
Cheerful Courage. And I am not sure but 
it would be worth any man's while to 
break his backbone for the sake of getting 
into that bath. But that is not at all 
necessary. 



74 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



TOO MANY LIGHTS. 

BOSTON Harbor saw a singular accident 
the other day. Nix's Mate is a small 
rocky island in the middle of the harbor, 
and one night the German steamer Brew- 
ster grounded upon it. The cause of the 
mishap was not manifest till the next 
day. when it was seen that a lantern 
placed near the island by dredgers had 
been mistaken for the regular gas buoy, 
marking the reef on which the vessel had 
stranded. 

The pilot was completely exonerated by 
the owners of the vessel. His error was 
perfectly natural. The fault was the 
dredgers', who should not have placed a 
light so near that marking the reef. or. 
if they did, should have chosen a light of 
some distinctive color. 

The incident was one of importance, 
since the repairs on the ship's bottom may 
cost $15.000 ; but it is of value to me. be- 
cause it has set me to thinking about the 
multiplying of signal lights along the way 
of life. 

There are so many of these lights ! I 



COMPARISONS 



75 



wonder that the young pilots of these life- 
crafts which I see around me do not get 
more confused than they do. Perhaps it is 
because they pay so little heed to the sig- 
nals ! 

But really, with oral advice and written, 
with the multiplicity of books and papers 
and addresses, all of us, old as well as 
young, have far more counsel, good and 
bad, than we can heed or digest. There is 
serious need of some discrimination. What 
shall we consider carefully, and what shall 
we neglect? 

Fortunately, the answer is ready. For- 
tunately, there is one series of lights, well 
marked, distinct, easily read. It is the 
Bible series. Every step of the way is 
marked by them. They shine out brightly 
on the darkest night. They cannot be con- 
fused with any others. And whoever com- 
mits his life ship to them will never go 
astray. 



76 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



ALL FROM A RAIL. 

IT was certainly one of the most curious 
accidents in railway annals. I got 
down to Riverside station just too late to 
witness it. I found the station platform 
crowded with people, and all the tracks 
covered with puffing locomotives and 
waiting trains. — the main-line tracks both 
ways, and the circuit track. — ten in all. 
This is what I learned had happened. 

Some Italians were carrying a heavy 
steel rail across the tracks just below the 
station, at a place where the circuit tracks 
branch off from the main-line tracks. There 
came bearing down upon them two trains 
going toward Boston. They were almost 
abreast. One was a passenger-train, and 
one, on another track, was a freight-train. 
The foreman, whose business it was to give 
the warning, did not see the trains, and 
the engineer of the passenger-train blew a 
warning whistle very sharply. 

At once the Italians, and small blame 
to them, dropped their heavy burden, and 
scuttled to a place of safety. At once the 
passenger-engine ran into the steel rail, 



COMPARISONS 



71 



which twisted up under the forward truck, 
threw it off the track, and it ploughed along 
for a thousand feet before its trucks were 
buried in the ground, and it came to a 
standstill. At once the other end of the 
rail, plunging around, caught the freight- 
engine, threw it also from the track, and 
it repeated the performance of engine 
number one. 

There was a pretty situation ! Three 
tracks were blocked, and the traffic in both 
directions was completely stalled. When I 
reached the place, Riverside had collected 
what was undoubtedly the largest assem- 
blage of locomotives and trains of its entire 
history. As it promised to be, and really 
was, hours before the tracks could be 
cleared, I hunted up an accommodating 
electric-car, and made my slow way to my 
office. 

While making the journey I had a chance 
to moralize on the mischief that is caused 
when a single man, in our complex modern 
civilization, ceases, for a single minute, to 
do his duty ; but my meditations need not 
be repeated, for they have doubtless, by this 
time, occurred also to you. 



78 



CALEB COBWEB'8 



A BACKWARD METER. 

AN electrician in New York has been ar- 
rested on the charge of interfering 
with an electric meter. It is said that he 
has been making and selling a device which, 
attached to a meter, will cause it to run 
backward, and very little electricity is used 
in the operation. He found a ready sale 
for the contrivance, and the company has 
been swindled out of hundreds of thousands 
of dollars. 

Well, that gentleman will doubtless get 
his deserts, and the company will be pre- 
pared against future enterprises of the sort. 
But there is a way of making meters run 
backward which cannot be reached by law, 
and yet it is far more meddlesome than 
any cellar stealing that was ever accom- 
plished. 

i refer to those miscreants who by their 
doubts, their sneers, their croakings, turn 
backward the indicator on the meter of 
progress, and make what is in reality a 
substantial gain look like a minus quantity. 

You know the kind of man I mean. 
Nothing good can be done in the world but 
he immediately begins to discount it. "O 



COMPARISONS 79 



well," he snarls, "it won't last. "You wait 
a few years, and you will hear no more of 
it. It is only a flash in the pan." 

And if it manages to survive his cheer- 
ful prediction and holds out for more than 
his few years, he takes another tack : "It 
is waning," he whines. "It is losing its 
former enthusiasm, its virility. It is on its 
last legs. Let it give way for something 
better, something adapted to present 
needs." 

- And then, if it inconsiderately refuses 
to give way, but obstinately remains on the 
stage of action, our kindly friend begins to 
call attention to the pride of too great suc- 
cess, the clangers of over-confidence, the ag- 
gressiveness of the powerful movement, or 
organization, or whatever it is. He raises 
a timely warning against it, and predicts 
that its pride will some day have a fall. 

This index manipulator is a great fellow 
for statistics. The most prosperous set <of 
figures ever drawn out of a printing-press 
will look, after he is through with it, like 
the balance-sheet of a bankrupt establish- 
ment after the expert accountant has gone 
over it. There is not enough left to start 
a new business in a tent. 

Things are always going to the dogs, and 
our friend can always prove it. He can 
paint a cloud into any picture. He puffs 
out a fog that blots out any sun. 



so 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



He is a thief, just like the people who 
used that electric attachment. The meter 
is all right. Our old world is rolling on 
as smoothly as ever, and every age is splen- 
didly better than the age before it. Hands 
off the meter ! No tampering with the in- 
dex ! And if any one tries the gloomy 
game, clap him into the dungeon of public 
execration ! 



COMPARISONS 



81 



FALSE SAPPHIRES AND TRUE 
DIAMONDS. 

A CLEVELAND jeweller is reported 
as disclosing one of the tricks of 
would-be smart folk. He declares that 
many people of considerable wealth wear 
imitation stones. These are seldom dia- 
monds, because it is comparatively easy 
to tell an artificial diamond. They are 
generally colored stones — rubies, or emer- 
alds, or sapphires. These false stones are 
worn with a real diamond, and the true 
jewel carries off the deceit. The diamond 
is so plainly a genuine article that no one 
questions the genuineness of the gems that 
accompany it. 

There ! said I to myself when I heard 
of this ; that accounts for the sucecss of 
some people whom I know. They do not 
deserve to succeed, these people. They are 
cheats in many ways. They pretend to 
know what they do not know. They get 
credit for doing a lot of things that some 
one else does for them. They repeat the 
bright sayings of other folks as if they 
were original. They brag of possessions 
they do not possess, and hint of accom- 
plishments that were never theirs. They 



82 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



glance at a book and talk as if they had 
read it. They make a smattering of an 
art serve them for a thorough acquaint- 
ance with it. And yet the world seems 
to believe in them, and takes them at 
their own estimate of themselves. 

Now I understand it. I will look into 
the matter, and I believe that I shall find 
in every one of them some genuine diamond 
accompanying all this falseness. While 
I have seen the artificial gems, probably 
the world has perceived the real one. This 
man may be kind, sincerely kind. An- 
other, perhaps, is thoroughly honest. An- 
other is always in a good humor. Each 
of these qualities is a splendid diamond. 
No wonder the world, perceiving it, lets 
the other stones pass without an investiga- 
tion. 

Of course the world is wrong; but I 
wonder if I, too, am not wrong a little ! 



COMPARISONS 



83 



BEING A BEE. 

NO one could understand it. The 
cherry-trees were loaded with magni- 
ficent fruit, and they had not borne fruit 
for years past. Some of them had never 
borne fruit. It was just the same way 
with the apple-trees. They had been con- 
demned to the axe, but the farmer had 
been too busy to cut them down. And 
now, as if they understood that they must 
do something to save their lives, here was 
this wonder of splendid fruit ! 

The secret was discovered at last. In- 
deed, it was very apparent — when it was 
discovered. It was bees. 

A number of beehives had been intro- 
duced to the farm that year, and this was 
one of the results. The busy little insects 
had carried to the trees just the pollen 
that they needed to fructify them, and the 
fertilized blossoms had become a glorious 
harvest. 

([This is what is happening all the time 
in the world of men, as well as in the 
world of trees. The bees are those indus- 
trious folk that are not original them- 



84 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



selves, but know how to prompt and feed 
originality in others. They carry intel- 
lectual pollen. 

Sometimes it is a bright sajung to which 
they give currency. Sometimes it is a 
witty anecdote which they pass around. 
Sometimes it is a noble book which they 
praise and lend and render popular. Some- 
times it is a scientific discovery which they 
translate into untechnical language and 
bring into notice in newspaper articles or 
popular lectures. 

These bees are invaluable in the home. 
How they make the dinner-table sparkle ! 
What mines of information they are to 
the children, and of inspiration to the 
grown-ups ! 

These bees are useful in a church. They 
always have helpful quotations and sug- 
gestive anecdotes for the prayer meeting. 
They can tell the pastor and the Sunday- 
school superintendent about the very new- 
est methods which they have picked up. 
Everywhere, indeed, — or, at least, wherever 
people are thinking and working, — these 
bees are grand assistants ; just because of 
their lack of originality, just because they 
pass along the best of other people's 
thoughts and plans. 

Oh, it is fine to be original ; but some- 
times I think that to be a transmitter of 
originality is finer still. 



COMPARISONS 



85 



AN ELECTRIC SWITCH. 

THE electric switches now in use on so 
many street-car lines must be a great 
convenience to the motormen and con- 
ductors — when they work ; provided they 
do not work too well. I have just been 
reading of a case in which one of them 
worked too well. 

It was in Brookline, Mass. The car 
went out over the point at which the elec- 
tric switch is operated. It kept on full 
current, and therefore the switch was not 
thrown. Close behind it, however, came a 
car, which, passing over the operating 
point, turned off its current, which had the 
effect of throwing the switch and swinging 
the rail. The forward truck of the first 
car had passed the switch, but the rear 
truck had not. That truck, therefore, was 
thrown off on tracks that ran at a sharp 
angle to the tracks on which the front 
truck was running. The result was that 
the rear wheels jumped the track, there 
was a tremendous crash, and the whole set 
of tracks was blocked for three quarters 
of an hour, till the wrecking-car could set 
matters right. 



86 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



\This is a complicated world in which we 
live, friends. What a network of tracks, 
with all these myriads of lives running 
here and there, all these millions of aims, 
and plans, and ambitions cutting across 
one another in every direction ! Every 
rod or so there are switches. Lives can 
pass very easily from one track to an- 
other. It is all free and easy. And the 
switches work at a touch. 

The wonder is that more mishaps do not 
occur. The wonder is that life-cars do not 
oftener crash into each other, and that 
electric switches are not oftener turned 
under us. 

And the lesson is : Go slowly ! Remem- 
ber that there are other cars on the same 
life-tracks. Look out for the next man as 
well as for yourself — for the man ahead of 
you ; also for the man behind you. You 
will get to the terminus quite as soon for 
it. Perhaps you will get there sooner. 
That Brookline car gained a few seconds by 
its precipitancy — and it lost forty-five min- 
utes. 



COMPARISONS 



87 



VALUABLE SWORDS. 

IT is said that the most valuable sword 
in the world belongs to the Gaekwar of 
Baroda. (Doubtless you know offhand 
what a Gaekwar is, and precisely where 
Baroda may be found.) This sword is 
worth $1,125,000. Hilt and scabbard are 
of gold, but you cannot see the gold for 
the great diamonds and rubies and emer- 
alds with which it is encrusted. It is an 
heirloom, and has passed from father to 
son for seven centuries. 

Another valuable sword — though so much 
less valuable as not to be mentioned with 
the former — is one owned by the Shah of 
Persia. It is covered with eastern pearls, 
and it is worth $50,000. 

The Czar is the proud possessor of a 
sword worth $75,000, covered with dia- 
monds, and the Sultan of Turkey, when 
he wants to cut a particular dash, straps 
on a scimitar whose hilt alone is worth 
$118,000. 

It is said regretfully that the United 
States does not possess a sword worth 
more than $3,000. Too bad ! 

And yet — how about George Washing- 
ton's sword with which he carved out a 
new republic? How about Grant's sword 



ss 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



with which that republic was preserved a 
united nation? How about the sword of 
John Brown? And. to go to other lands, 
how about the sword of Chinese Gordon, 
the sword of Havelock, the sword of Wil- 
liam of Orange? 

This country — every country — possesses 
more than one sword whose value in the 
eyes of all sensible men is not to be esti- 
mated in money. Not all the diamonds 
and rubies and emeralds in the world are 
to be compared with it. Could the wealth 
of Great Britain buy from the United 
States the sword of Washington, or the 
wealth of the United States buy from 
Great Britain the sword of Wellington? 

A diamond-encrusted sword is about the 
most absurd object in the world. It is 
self-contradictory. It proclaims its own 
uselessness. It is like the surface glitter 
of "society men." It is like the show of 
learning made by pedants. It is like the 
rhetoric of certain orators I have heard. 
It is like the Pharisee's prayers on the 
street corners. It is like the man in the 
Epistle of James who said, "Be ye warmed 
and fed," and let it go with the saying. 

For the best beauty of the sword is the 
glitter of steel and the sharp edge — pro- 
vided there is any need of a sword at all ; 
and the best splendor of a man is that he 
do the work which God means him to do. 



COMPARISONS 



89 



WEIGHT WHILE YOU WAIT. 

THE Boston post-office is laughing over 
the experience of one of its examiners 
who has been testing candidates for clerk- 
ships in that big institution. One man 
who was examined weighed only 112 
pounds. Now 125 pounds was at that 
time (I believe the rule has since been 
changed) the least that a post-office clerk 
might weigh. If a man weighed less than 
that, he was not considered strong enough 
for the work. According to custom, the 
candidate was given thirty days in which 
to increase his weight the necessary thir- 
teen pounds. 

Up he popped at the end of the month, 
and the scales showed that he now weighed 
127% pounds. That looked like a miracle. 
The examiner's suspicions were aroused. 
He viewed the applicant closely. He did 
not appear plump. He did not look like 
a man that was "heavy for his size." Un- 
der the circumstances, the man was told to 
take off his clothes. 

This being done, lo ! ten strips of lead 
were found bound about his manly form. 
Some of them were six inches long, some 
of them were two feet long. Altogether 
they weighed 15% pounds. The miracle 



9o 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



was explained, and the candidate was dis- 
missed. 

When I read that story, I thought at 
once of the many short cuts to knowledge 
that so abound nowadays. "German in 
Six Weeks!" "Shorthand in Ten Easy 
Lessons !" "Three Months in our Busi- 
ness College and a Position is Assured!" 
"The Universal Sage, or, All Knowledge 
Condensed Into a Yest-Pocket Volume for 
Handy Reference !" That is the way some 
of the promises read. 

Now it is good to realize that you can- 
not get weight "while you wait." Strips 
of lead are easily obtained and quickly at- 
tached, but they are not weight. The 
world has many examiners, keen of wit 
and shrewd of eye. One or another of 
them is sure to find you out. Then come 
confusion and disgrace. 

It is useless to think of it ; there is 
only one way to gain weight, and that 
is by proper eating, proper exercise, and 
proper sleep. And there is only one way 
to gain mental and spiritual weight, and 
that is by proper brain food and heart 
food, digested by thought and action. It 
is a slow process. It is carried on "while 
you wait," to be sure, but the wait is, oh, 
how long ! 

It pays, however. It is the open sesame 
to every position worth having in all the 
world. 



COMPARISONS 



91 



ACRE CLUBS. 

THE new State of Oklahoma has, as is 
fitting, a new idea. It is the plan to 
form "acre clubs" among the farmers all 
over the State. Twelve or fifteen farmers 
of a community are to form the club in 
that neighborhood. Each farmer agrees to 
plant a single acre for a certain crop, to 
give it the best care he can, and keep an 
exact account of his expenses and labor 
with reference to that acre, together with 
the growth and development of the crop 
and of other matters necessary to make 
the experiment as instructive as possible. 

After the harvest the club is to hear in 
turn the results of all these acres, and 
thorough discussion is to give to every 
member of the club the full experience of 
all the other members with regard to their 
acres. So far as possible, each acre is 
to be planted for a different crop, so as to 
bring in the largest amount of informa- 
tion. 

The idea is so admirable that it is a 
shame to confine it to agriculture ; why 
not apply it also to things of the spirit? 

Why, for instance, should not a dozen 
Christians band themselves together, each 



92 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



agreeing to cultivate some little corner 
of the great "field which is the world," 
and report to the whole club from time to 
time just how they are getting along and 
all that they have learned? 

One will take a Sunday-school class. 
One will take a church committee. One 
will take an old ladies' home. One will 
take a discouraged mother. One will take 
a "tough" young man. One will try per- 
sonal evangelistic work. One will under- 
take Christian correspondence. One will 
see what can be done by lending good 
books. One will use a consecrated talent 
for music. 

And each will "occupy" his acre. — will 
fill it full, that is. of earnest planning and 
ardent toil. The one will learn from the 
other, and all will learn from God. His 
rain and His sunshine will help them with 
their acres, and will accomplish far more 
than all their hoes and ploughs. And 
after the harvest they will meet for such 
a jubilee as their lives have never known 
before. 

Acre clubs ! Come to think of it, that 
is what all churches and all prayer meet- 
ings should be. 



COMPARISONS 



93 



IT IS IN THE AIR. 

NOT long ago the wireless operator of 
the Panama railroad steamer Advance, 
while off the coast of New Jersey, received 
the following message : "Magazine of the 
battleship Louisiana exploded off Rio. All 
on board lost." After a short time another 
message was picked up, correcting the first 
by saying that the boilers and not the 
magazine had exploded. It was not till 
the Advance reached New York that its 
passengers discovered that the messages 
were merely jokes. Some "smart" amateur 
had sent out the messages from his private 
experiment station, and was chuckling to 
himself over the dismay he was causing. 

This ought to be stopped. Doubtless it 
will be stopped some day by the national 
government, if there is no other way to 
reach the nuisance. It is too easy to set 
up wireless telegraph stations. These pri- 
vate experimenters are getting in the way 
of the operators that have actual messages 
to send. Their electrical impulses make 
hash of the messages that have a right to 
the air because they are real messages. 

Of course it will go hard with men to 
learn that the air is not open to them all 



94 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



around the earth, and yet it must not be 
free to them. No man is permitted to run 
over another's land, or to fire a bullet over 
it. either ; no more will he be permitted to 
fire electrical darts through the air that 
does not belong to him. 

All of which has set me to thinking 
about a different sort of wireless teleg- 
raphy — a sort that is as old as the other 
is new. and as familiar as the other is 
strange. 

•'It is in the air." we say of an idea or 
a belief or an opinion which has taken 
men's fancy and captured men's minds. 
Perhaps it is an unfavorable judgment con- 
cerning some one. Perhaps it is a sense of 
coming disaster in the business world. Per- 
haps it is an eagerness for a political 
change. ''It is in the air.'' we say of any 
of these matters, thinking that this is a 
sufficient explanation of it. 

No, this is not a sufficient explanation of 
it. We ought to find out how it got into 
the air. Did it originate from some tri- 
fler's wireless telegraph station? Was it 
born as an irresponsible joke or a baseless 
sarcasm or sneer? Is it empty and unsub- 
stantial as the air in which it is? 

Let an opinion be ever so much "in the 
air,'* it has no right to a place in our heads 
or our hearts unless it is also in truth and 
in love. 



COMPARISONS 



95 



CHURCH INVALIDS' ROOMS. 

A well-appointed modern church, es- 
pecially one that happens to be situ- 
ated in a town that is a health resort, is 
quite likely to boast an invalids' room. 

This room is placed near the pulpit, so 
that the occupants can hear easily. It is 
set a little above the pulpit, so that the 
invalids will not be stared at by the con- 
gregation. The room has little windows in 
it, through which the invalids may look out 
and see the congregation and the preacher. 
In these comfortable apartments are 
rocking-chairs, and reclining-chairs, and 
couches. Of course there are no drafts. 
Here the sick folks may come or be car- 
ried, and here, well wrapped up, they can 
hear the singing and the prayers and the 
sermon, and, while still virtually in a sick- 
room, can go to church. 

That is very well for the invalids, and 
no one should be anything but glad over 
it. But what is to be said about the ar- 
rangement if one is not sick? Certainly 
that it would be a great absurdity. 

Nevertheless, where is there a church, 
though a thousand miles from a health re- 



96 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



sort, and though every member of the 
congregation is in sound and flourishing 
health, but boasts an invalids' room? Nay, 
some of these churches are nothing but 
invalids' rooms, from the front door to the 
pulpit, and including the vestry in the" rear. 

The people that occupy these invalids' 
rooms are sensitive Christians that must be 
protected from all kinds of spiritual drafts. 
They are weak Christians, too timid or too 
retiring or too lazy to do any work. Their 
idea of "service" is going to church — and 
listening. They seem to sit in pews, these 
church invalids, but the angels, who see 
things as they are, know that they are 
really lying on couches, every one of them, 
each covered with a soft little afghan. 

But what a pleasure it would be to open 
all the windows in such a church, and fill 
it full of drafts, and fling around a whip 
of small cords that would give the invalids 
some salutary exercise ! Alas ! I am not 
likely to have the privilege, for no one is 
admitted to such invalids' rooms but the 
doctor and the nurse. 



COMPARISONS 



BODY UNDER GARMENTS. 

FOR nearly twenty years Frederic, Lord 
Leighton, was president of the British 
Royal Academy. He won this crowning 
honor by the classic beauty of his paintings 
and sculpture and by their amazing finish 
and accuracy. Lord Leighton was a 
painter of power and insight, but he was 
also a superb master of the details of his 
art. In this he was a model for all of 
us, even though we have nothing of his 
genius. 

Here is the way he made his wonderful 
pictures. 

First he sketched his idea carefully on 
brown paper with black and white chalk. 

Then he posed the nude model precisely 
in the position the painting was to show, 
draped the model, and made another care- 
ful sketch. 

Then a third sketch was made, this 
time in colors to get the color scheme. 

Then from these sketches the nude 
figure was accurately and painstakingly 
painted upon the canvas that was to con- 
tain the finished picture. This was in 
monochrome. 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



Then, using his brown paper sketch 
which he had first prepared, Leighton ar- 
ranged the draperies that were to cover 
the figure in the painting — those wonder- 
ful draperies for which Leighton was so 
famous, placing them carefully in position, 
fold upon fold, and carefully painting them 
over the nude figure upon the canvas, still 
using the monochrome. 

Then, over this monochrome, Leighton 
placed the exquisite colors that made his 
paintings dreams of beauty. 

The artist's canvasses were usually 
crowded with figures, and for every one 
of them the president of the Royal 
Academy went through the same laborious 
course of study. Indeed, for many of his 
figures he even made clay models, to study 
the effect of foreshortening and for other 
purposes. It is no wonder that his figures 
stand out from the canvas full and 
rounded as if the living flesh and blood 
were beneath. The body was beneath every 
portion of the intricate garment folds. 

Oh, that is the way I want to do my 
work in the world ! 

There are some men whose utterances 
have solidity and substance. When they 
speak, every word carries weight. Their 
decisions have results. Their opinions 
move men. Their sentences are quoted and 
influence events. 



COMPARISONS 



99 



Other men may use ten times as many 
words, but their words seem to burst like 
bubbles. They are empty and ineffectual. 
Their sentiments go out into the air as 
fruitless as it is. 

The cause of the difference between the 
two is this. The first man speaks as 
Leighton painted. He forms his opinions 
by study. He has looked on both sides of 
every question upon which he gives a 
judgment. He can give a reason for the 
faith that is in him — nay, twenty reasons, 
and all of them good ones. 

The second man has done nothing of all 
this. His words express his feelings of 
the moment, and they change as his feel- 
ings change. Men have learned this with 
regard to him, and estimate him accord- 
ingly. 

tChere is only one way to give body to 
words, and that is to paint the body in 
back of them by thorough information and 
long meditation. Such words are events. 



100 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



STAND UP TO YOUR TASK. 

Postmaster Gexeral Meyer believes 
that it is a bad plan to sit down while 
at work, even if one is engaged in what is 
known as a sedentary occupation. He 
has had a desk brought all the way from 
Massachusetts to the Capitol, a desk which 
he used in former years when speaker of 
the Massachusetts House of Representa- 
tives. It is a desk so tall that he can stand 
up at it and do his work. He is sure that 
by this means he gets a larger amount 
of work done in the course of the day. 

There is still to be seen in the famous 
tower room in the "Wayside" at Concord, 
Mass.. — the house now occupied by "Mar- 
garet Sidney." Mrs. Lothrop — the standing 
desk made by himself at which Hawthorne 
used to write his great romances and 
charming sketches. This wonderful artist 
in words seems to have held to the opinion 
of our Postmaster General. 

There was an English judge — I do not 
remember his name — who had the curious 
habit of always placing his ink-well six 
feet away from his desk. Every time, 
therefore, that he needed a penful of ink 



! 



COMPARISONS 



101 



he was obliged to walk that distance to 
get it. This was the only exercise he took, 
and it sufficed to bring him to a sound old 
age. 

Stand up to your task ! There is war- 
rant for the idea in our popular slang, for 
"to stand up to" a man or an undertaking 
is to attack it (or him) with vigor and 
perseverance, like a man. 

There is a sitting-down habit of mind 
as well as of body. It means a relaxing 
of the mental fibre, a letting up of resolu- 
tion, a weakening of spiritual force. No 
one can work at his best under such condi- 
tions. To work at one's best one must 
be alert in every nerve and muscle and 
brain corrugation. The red blood must 
course along the veins and arteries in a 
jubilant stream. The shoulders of the soul 
must be firm and erect as well as the 
shoulders of the body. The backbone must 
be well poised — the .spiritual backbone as 
well as the backbone of bone. If a little 
standing up to my desk will help me into 
that spiritual and mental attitude, I will 
prop up my desk on dry-goods boxes this 
very day. 



102 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



MOVE OUT. 

FOR three years somebody with a com- 
mendable amount of patience has in- 
vestigated the connection in Paris between 
consumption and places. The French capi- 
tal, though its population is only a little 
more than a million souls, sees every year 
the death from "the white plague" of 
9,500. That is a fearful record. There 
must be a reason for it. 

There is. The reason is the tenement. 
The poor people of Paris are housed in 
immense blocks, each swarming with life, 
and each reeking with the seeds of death. 
These tenements are built around narrow 
courts, and many of the rooms get very 
little light or air. Now during 1906 no 
fewer than 7,807 deaths from consumption 
occurred in houses where before there had 
been deaths from consumption. During 
1905 the figures were 7,829 — almost ex- 
actly the same. One-third of the deaths 
from consumption in Paris are traced con- 
tinually to 5,263 houses — the same 5,263 
houses every year. The houses that show 
the most deaths from consumption in one 
year show it in the other years also. 



COMPARISONS 



103 



There is one group of 281 houses in 
which 109 people died from consumption 
during 1905, and 114 during 1906. And 
these death areas are all the time reach- 
ing out, widening into other houses. 

The remedy is obvious. Tear down and 
burn up the worst houses. Thoroughly 
cleanse the rest, and let in the air and the 
light. This — though only to a slight ex- 
tent as yet — is what Paris is doing. 

The lesson is a spiritual one also. There 
are plague spots in my life. There are 
scenes in which I have met temptation. 
There are circumstances under which I 
have fallen a prey to the evil one. There 
a disease of the soul has come upon me 
that is far more terrible than any disease 
of the body. 

Shall I go on living in those scenes, ex- 
posed to the same temptations? 

No ! no ! and again, no ! 
(JLet me move out. Let me get into the 
clean sunshine and the fresh, pure air. 
Let me flee from the germ-infected region. 
Let me surround myself with circumstances 
that will carry no reminder of temptation. 

For to the soul a baneful acquaintance, 
or a vile picture, or a slimy book, or even 
the smell of a liquor, or the sound of a 
certain piece of music, may be a house 
of death more certainly fatal than any 
consumption-plagued house in Paris. 



104 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



NO ONE BELIEVED HIM. 

A LONDON pawnbroker made a wager 
with a friend not long ago. He as- 
serted that he could put in his window a 
diamond worth $500 (one hundred guin- 
eas), and mark it for sale at 56 cents (two 
shillings three pence), and that no one 
would buy it at that price, though he 
waited five days. The experiment was 
made, and the pawnbroker won. The dia- 
mond was exposed for sale, thus absurdly 
ticketed, and by the end of the five days 
it remained unsold. 

A good illustration, that, of the common 
dependence upon high prices and show. 
Let a man or a thing be rated extrava- 
gantly, by themselves or others, and in 
most cases the world will accept them at 
the inflated valuation. Let them be set 
forth as of little worth, and they will be 
little esteemed. 

How I wish I had been in London dur- 
ing those five days, and had chanced to 
look into that pawnbroker's window ! And 
yet why do I think that I should have had 
so much more discernment than others? 
Probably I also should have glanced care- 
lessly at the stone, muttered "Paste!" and 
passed on my way. 



COMPARISONS 



105 



It is thus with the most precious things 
of life. They are all given away, or sold 
at a price ridiculously below their real 
value. Thus it is with love, and friend- 
ship. Thus it is with fresh air and sun- 
shine and birds' songs. Thus it is with 
flowers and sunsets and all the beauty of 
the natural world. Thus it is with the 
divine pardon and comfort and helpful- 
ness. Thus it is with heaven. Thus it is 
with Jesus Christ. 

Ah, because these are given away, "with- 
out money and without price," shall I be 
so foolish as to spend my time and strength 
and money upon the costly toys of the 
transient world? 



106 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



ACCOMMODATING. 
RUNIGEN, a village near Zurich, Ger- 



Vj many, boasts of a newspaper which 
is certainly unique. It is named the 
Wochenblatt. and its enterprising editor 
and proprietor is Herr J. Wirz. 

Now Grunigen has only fifteen hundred 
inhabitants. Herr Wirz realized, there- 
fore, that he and his paper would starve 
together if he did not succeed in obtaining 
as subscribers practically all the people 
within reach. So he built up a literary 
product designed to please. He has four 
pages. Two of them are given up to the 
liberal party of Germany, and two to the 
conservatives. One week the editor writes 
for the first side, and the second his edi- 
torials are on the second side. In each 
issue he demolishes his arguments of the 
preceding number. He condemns himself 
unsparingly. He heaps ridicule and sar- 
casm upon himself with no fear of a duel. 
He conducts a desperate war with himself, 
and his readers look on. delighted. His 
happy artifice brings him a comfortable 
reward. 

I laughed when I read the story : for, 
after all, Herr Wirz is not unique, but is 
one of a large and flourishing class of 




COMPARISONS 



107 



agreeable toilers. You find them in thou- 
sands of editorial chairs. Many of them 
are professors, many are politicians, some 
are ministers of the gospel. They are 
found in all occupations and in all grades 
of society. 

\What they want is a living, not a per- 
sonality. They readily sink their man- 
hood in any scheme that ends in a bank 
account. If they have opinions, they will 
not utter them. If they learn of evils, they 
will not proclaim them. They will turn 
no client from their office. They will de- 
bate on either side, accept any commis- 
sion, enter any alliance. They know only 
one thing, that the world, as they say, 
owes them a living. They hold to only one 
allegiance, and that is their loyalty to 
themselves. The Wochenblatt comedy is 
played in every town. 

But the comedy becomes a tragedy ere 
long. HWoe unto you when all men speak 
well of you !" Woe unto you when all 
men subscribe for your paper or join your 
church or vote your ticket. You have 
passed, by that token, the limit of true 
manhood. One of the first duties of a man 
is to take sides. He who is not for Christ 
is against Him. If all men speak well of 
you now, a time is coming when no word 
can be spoken well of you, on earth or in 
heaven. 



108 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



"NO RIGHT TO HIMSELF." 

I HAVE just come across a fine sentence, 
written by Charles Russell Lowell, a 
nephew of the poet Lowell. He was a 
young soldier in the Civil War. and he died 
fighting gallantly for his country. The 
sentence I refer to is taken from one of 
his letters. It is this : 

"I feel every day. more and more, that 
a man has no right to himself at all." 

Of course you are familiar with the 
thought. It is only another way of saying 
that he who would find his life must lose 
it. But even the Saviour's words come to 
us sometimes with new force when the 
thought is put in a different fashion from 
that to which we have grown so accus- 
tomed. 

"A man has no right to himself !" 

Paul knew that. "Ye are not your 
own." he declared. "Ye are bought with a 
price." 

All great souls have known it. and in 
the knowledge have become great and have 
done great deeds. 

For it is when a man thinks that he is 



COMPARISONS 



109 



his own, that his life and his possessions 
belong to him, that he can spend his time 
as he likes and his money as he pleases, and 
use his talents according to his own will — 
it is then that a man is small, and grows 
smaller every day. That thought turns in- 
ward. It has one miserable centre, and all 
gravitation is toward that centre. It is 
a condensing thought, a dwarfing thought. 

(But this other idea, that I am not my 
own, that my goods are not my own, nor 
my time, nor my talents, that they belong 
to the next man that needs me, to the next 
cause that seeks me, to the whole wide 
world and all that is therein — this idea is 
broadening, it radiates, it enjoys an ever- 
extending circumference. The world is 
the sphere of that thought, and so is the 
universe. It is enough, just by itself, to 
transform a dwarf into a giant. 

"A man has no right to himself at all." 
No right as against God's desire for him. 
No right as against man's need of him. No 
right — ah, it amounts to this in the end ! — 
no right as against his imperial destiny 
that God is eagerly reaching out for him 
to take. For every man is a king, and a 
king has no right to himself. He is his 
kingdom's. 



110 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



UP CLOSE TO YOUR WORK. 

ONCE there was a man that made a 
foolish wager. All wagers are fool- 
ish, for that matter, but this was particu- 
larly foolish. 

He bet that he could tie a brick to two 
miles of cord, and, pulling on the further 
end of the cord, move the brick. He 
thought he was sure of winning. 

The experiment was made outside the 
city of Chichester. England. A brick 
weighing about seven pounds was used. 
Two miles of stout cord were tied to it, 
and the man pulled. And he could not 
budge the brick. 

Neither could you, for the friction of the 
two miles of cord upon the level road in- 
creased the seven pounds of the brick, as 
has been roughly estimated, to a dead 
weight of about one ton ! 

The lesson I get from this experiment 
in physics applies to all my work. It 
is this : do not work at long range ! Get 
up close to whatever you are doing. It 
is a weight that you must lift. Very well : 
put your two hands directly under it, and 



COMPARISONS 



111 



lift ! Do not tie a rope to it and go off 
a mile or two and pull. 

There are all sorts of long-distance ways 
of working. 

Some people must have committees ap- 
pointed for everything, and put the cord 
of two or three business meetings, and 
a set of resolutions, and an election, and 
a chairman, and committee meetings, and 
preliminary reports, and instructions, and 
a second report, and a lot besides, be- 
tween themselves and their brick. 

Some people even go further, and really 
cannot see their way to get anything done 
without forming a society for the purpose. 

Others cannot undertake any matter, 
however simple, but they must first study 
it up at great length in all the libraries 
to which they have access. 

Still others cannot go to their tasks till 
they have consulted a dozen people about 
them, and put two miles of more or less 
expert advice between themselves and their 
brick. 

And others before doing anything must 
write out a plan for doing it and a set 
of elaborate rules, stretching two miles of 
self-manufactured red tape between them- 
selves and their brick. 

Give me the men that have no use for 
such ingenious subterfuges for avoiding 
work ! Give me the men that, when they 



112 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



see a thing needs to be done, go and do 
it ! Is it a brick to be got out of the 
way or built into a wall? Very well. 
Here are two hands. Presto ! The deed 
is done. And now, what next? 



COMPARISONS 



113 



UNDER COVER. 

UT California way there is a certain 



V_y melon-grower that may be a Yankee 
or may not be, but he has found a Yankee 
way of doing things. He has six acres of 
melons, and of this great expanse of possi- 
ble lusciousness he has covered 876 hills 
with canopies. 

These canopies are made of white mus- 
lin, and each is about as large as a man's 
handkerchief. The canopies are stretched 
over bent wires, which are crossed like 
the centre arches in croquet. Each can- 
opy is sowed to the ends of the wires, and 
the wires are then, stuck into the ground 
so as to stretch the muslin taut and keep 
the wind from blowing it away. The pro- 
tectors cost about eight cents apiece. 

Under the canopies the young plants 
grow, snugly shielded from the wind and 
the frost, while the sun's rays are impris- 
oned much as in a hot-bed. At the time 
when the article was written from which 
I gained my information, the protected 
plants were far ahead of their unprotected 
brothers and sisters, and the experiment 




114 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



seemed likely to result in melons about 
three weeks in advance of all competitors. 
That, in this impatient age, is worth a 
small fortune to their enterprising owner. 

And now, quite apart from thoughts of 
money gain, is there not much advan- 
tage in the use of canopies in all our plan- 
ning and working? 

Some of us, I think, thrust the seeds of 
our designs into cold ground and expose 
the tender shoots to all the blasts of 
heaven. We have no mercy upon these 
babes of our heart and brain. We tell 
our plan to the first man we meet, or we 
present it at the first meeting that we at- 
tend after forming the plan. It gets 
"nipped in the bud," as we say. More 
truly, usually, it never gets into the bud 
at all, but gets nipped in the seed. 

(Let us quietly adopt the canopy notion. 
When we get an idea, let us cherish it in 
secret for a while. Let us "mull over it." 
Let us communicate it, if to any, then to 
sympathetic souls. Let us stretch above 
it a cover of meditation and prayer. Let 
us fashion for it a little sunshine-room 
where it may enjoy to the full the rays 
of a fructifying sun. Let us not expose 
it to the criticism of the world till it is 
well formed, till its roots are established in 
our mind, till it is ready for the buffet- 
ings that are sure to try its strength to 



COMPARISONS 



115 



the utmost at the same time that they 
develop new strength. 

If this is the way to raise good melons 
and to raise them swiftly, I am sure that 
it is also the way to raise good plans that 
will grow and blossom and bear frait. 



116 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



PHYSIOGNOMICAL HAIR-CUTTING. 

IN the narrow street back of my office — 
it is more an alley than a street — is an 
Italian barber-shop. Five or six enter- 
prising sons of Italy are always smilingly 
on hand in the sub-sidewalk room ; and 
they do good work, for I have tried them. 

But what pleases me especially is the 
sign outside. It is a very neat sign, and 
it reads, ''Physiognomical Hair-Cutting." 

I suppose that means hair-cutting to fit 
the face. Not the same kind of hair-cut- 
ting for the long-faced man and the round- 
faced man. A gloomy sort of hair-cut for 
the solemn-faced man. A cheery sort of 
hair-cut for the joker, with a mustache, 
if he has one, comically turned up at the 
corners. A professional type of hair-cut. 
A ministerial variety. A special kind for 
musicians and artists. Why, a perfect 
vista of possibilities opens up at the very 
mention of "physiognomical hair-cutting." 

How well my physiognomical barbers do 
it I cannot tell you. I should need to 
take my position outside their shop and 
watch their product for a day or two. 



COMPARISONS 



117 



Very likely each customer has his own pre- 
ferred style of hair-cut, and insists upon 
it, oblivious of the demands of Art. / 
have, and do. 

But, just the same, their aim is high. 
They have fixed their mark. They will 
be physiognomical hair-cutters, and not 
the common sort. They will get out of 
the beaten track. They will develop a 
specialty. They will become artists in 
very truth. 

(And that is what succeeds in any call- 
ing — not just common hair-cutting, but 
physiognomical hair-cutting. Not hum- 
drum school-teaching, but the kind that 
Horace Mann did. Not ordinary news- 
paper copy, but the sort that Horace 
Greeley turned out. It is the little touches 
that other folks don't think of. It is the 
extra polish that others do not achieve. 
It is the pushing of pens and ploughs and 
yard-sticks and rolling-pins and flat-irons 
and scissors to higher than the usual ends, 
to ends that come as close to art as possi- 
ble — it is this that ensures success. 

If it is ever my lot to be a barber, I 
shall be a professor of comparative physi- 
ognomy. 



118 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



THE CAT IN THE GARDEN. 

I HAVE been putting in my vegetable 
seeds. The process always develops un- 
expected difficulties, in my case at least, 
but this year the difficulty was one of large 
dimensions. It was our cat. 

We have had cats for years. We had 
this cat last year. But this is the first 
time the particular difficulty to which I 
refer has occurred. 

Our cat suddenly has come to fancy 
clawing the earth, and walking around in 
it, and sitting down on it. Of course he 
has done that before. All cats like to do 
it. But this year it has become a passion. 

I will spade up a portion of the garden, 
break up the soil into fine particles, rake 
it into a smooth bed, make my trenches 
and plant my seeds, covering them nicely 
over and firming the ground over them, 
and will go away, leaving the promising 
blank surface happily to the sun and the 
showers. 

And, alas, to the cat! 
I will come back the next day only to 
find that bed a pandemonium, scratched 
into great holes, and all the work to do 



COMPARISONS 



119 



over again, to say nothing of the loss of 
the seeds. 

I tried stretching mosquito-netting over 
the drills. The cat got on the mosquito- 
netting and drove it deep into the soil in 
a series of humps and holes. That cat 
is a heavy animal. Also, he is not easily 
balked. 

I tried covering the beds with brushy 
The cat took the brush as a challenge. 
Was some foe concealed underneath? He 
found out. 

Then I tried driving posts at each corner 
of the bed and winding string around the 
whole, yards upon yards of it, and then 
over the top, back and forth, till I had 
made an enclosure of string. I knew, of 
course! that the cat could get through 
that frail barrier, but I hoped he would 
take the hint. Not he. 

This morning I was at work in the gar- 
den when I saw him push his way into 
that string enclosure and make havoc in 
my best bed, where neat rows of beets and 
parsnips were already pushing their green 
exploring fingers through the soil. 

This was my chance to teach that cat a 
lesson, and I sprung after him. With a 
leap that left more havoc behind him, he 
fled, and I pursued. Across the yard and 
into the cellar. Through the cellar and up 
stairs into the kitchen. Through the kit- 



120 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



chen and into the summer kitchen. There 
I had him, for the outside door was 
shut. 

I was not angry with the cat. He is a 
fine fellow. He did not know he was 
doing wrong ; how could he ? And why 
should he be punished for doing what he 
did not know to be wrong? 

And yet here was a practical problem : 
how, unless he was punished, could he 
know that it was wrong to go under string 
enclosures and trample on garden-beds? 
Cat intelligence is very good in its way, 
but I might talk all day to that cat, and 
explain with care the difference between 
ground that is soft and ground that is 
hard, and ground that has string around it 
and ground that has not, and at the end of 
the day that cat would have been no atom 
the wiser. How could I teach him a les- 
son? Obviously, in no other way than by 
punishing him. So I did it. 

He was not hurt, except in his feelings. 
I simply gave him a few very emphatic 
pats that he could not mistake for caresses. 
Then I took him into the garden and held 
him, violently kicking, while I repaired 
the damage as best I could. Then I let 
him go and he flew into hiding, evidently 
feeling his disgrace. 

And as I went on with my work in the 
garden I wondered to myself whether God 



COMPARISONS 



121 



is not sometimes driven to similar ways 
of teaching us stupid creatures, whose in- 
telligence is so far below His own that it 
must be a matter of extreme difficulty, 
often, to get into our minds at all what 
must be to Him the simplest of truths. 
We run under the strings, which are the 
laws of the universe, and we must be 
taught not to ; and often suffering is the 
only way. I will remember this the next 
time I have a headache or a heartache. 



122 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



CHURCH BEES. 

A LONDON paper gives an interesting 
account of a swarm of bees that for 
more than twenty years has had possession 
of the roof of the nave of Ifidel Parish 
Church. Recently they have abused their 
privileges. At one time .hundreds of them 
were found in the church, their bodies 
sprawled all over the floor. They have 
annoyed the vicar in the pulpit. They 
have stung a member of the choir. Their 
room came to be decidedly better than 
their company. 

Therefore some one that understood how 
to handle bees was called in. He studied 
the situation, mounted the roof, made a 
hole in it, and bagged the entire colony of 
honey-makers. Off they went to find more 
suitable quarters in a hive, and now that 
church is at peace. 

The bee is a fine insect. For centuries 
it has received the praise of moralists for 
its industry and its commendable social 
qualities. But, in spite of this, it is no 
model for the Christian, and no fit mem- 
ber of a church. That is because the pri- 
mary Christian quality is not industry, ad- 



COMPARISONS 



123 



mirable as that is, but love ; and in love 
the bee is sadly wanting. When smitten 
on the one cheek it does not turn the 
other ; it turns its sting, and with effi- 
ciency. It is hot-headed. It is a nui- 
sance in a crowd. 

And so I do not like church bees. They 
are busy, but they are busybodies. They 
are all the time doing things, but they 
do some things that would better be left 
undone. Their zeal outruns their dis- 
cretion. Their tongues are as sharp as 
the bee's sting, and quite as ready, on no 
provocation worth mentioning. Their un- 
kind remarks, their sarcasms, their innuen- 
does, their faultfinding, their officiousness, 
tear down faster than their labor, how- 
ever constant, can possibly build up. They 
are bees, but their honey is bitter. 

We want church workers, but not bees. 
The horse is as industrious as the bee, and 
it has no sting. The cow is as good a 
plodder as the bee, and its temper is pleas- 
ant, usually. And if I want sweetness in 
a church I can get it without bees — by 
raising sugar-cane, for instance. 

The Mormons chose a beehive for their 
symbol. They may keep it. 



124 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



HANDICAPPING ONE'S SELF. 

HOUDINI is a wonderful man. He 
seems to be able to wriggle out of 
any pair of handcuffs that ever were 
snapped on, to make his way out of any 
prison however stout the doors, and to 
force an exit from any box into which he 
may be nailed or chained or bolted. 

One of his latest exploits was the fol- 
lowing : After appropriate advertisements 
— for Houdini is not in this business for 
the fun of it — the wizard stood one day 
on Harvard Bridge, connecting Boston and 
Cambridge, while a tremendous crowd 
watched him. He placed his hands behind 
his back and allowed them to be handcuffed 
together. An iron yoke was set around his 
neck and a chain was run from it to the 
handcuffs, the chain also being fastened to 
clasps which encircled his arms just be- 
low the shoulder. Thus weighted with 
sixteen pounds of iron and steel, Houdini 
leaped from the bridge into the swift cur- 
rent of Charles River, twenty-six feet be- 
low. 

In less than a minute the remarkable 
man thrust his hand above the green water 



COMPARISONS 



125 



and held aloft the opened handcuffs ! 
Houdini says it was forty seconds, and de- 
clares that he can time himself closer than 
any split-second watch. Whatever the 
time, it was a marvellous feat. 

I should like to be able to do that — and 
then not do it ! On the river of life I have 
seen the thing done many a time — at least 
the first part of it, the putting on the 
handcuffs. The other part, the twisting 
out of the handcuffs while wrestling with 
the stream, I have seen very seldom in- 
deed. 

Handcuffed? How? 



(Why, by bad habits, by drinking, by 
gambling, by licentiousness, by sloth, by 
carelessness, by conceit, by lying, by dis- 
honesty, by infidelity. Each of these is a 
pair of handcuffs with which I have seen 
many a young fellow allow his hands to 
be locked behind his back while he leaped 
into the river of life. Then I have seen 
him flounder awhile. Then I have heard 
him raise one despairing cry to heaven. 
Then he has sunk, to rise no more. 

Oh, leave that sort of thing to Houdini 
and the Charles River ! Or, if you must 
try it, try Houdini's kind of handcuffs. 
You will be safer with those than with any 
of the handcuffs I have named. 



126 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



WHAT A SOLDIER CARRIES. 

I AM much interested in a list that lies 
before me giving the weights that the 
different nations of Europe place upon 
their soldiers when they are on the march. 
French soldiers must carry 57.48 pounds, 
German soldiers 64.71 pounds, Italian sol- 
diers 64.10 pounds, Russian soldiers 64.25 
pounds, Austrian soldiers 58.55 pounds, 
and so on. The average weight is 62.41 
pounds. 

This great burden includes arms, cook- 
ing utensils, intrenching tools, and other 
material necessary for his trade. The 
American soldier marches much lighter, 
because he is usually free from the burden 
of intrenching tools and cooking utensils, 
with the exception of his kit. 

Governments are all the time trying to 
lighten this load, and the increasing com- 
plexity of war is all the time adding to 
it. . Doubtless it will always be necessary 
for soldiers to go thus handicapped- — that 
is, till the happy day when soldiers and 
armies will be memories of the past. 

But, after all, the soldier's burden is 



COMPARISONS 



127 



part of the soldier's efficiency. He can- 
not move so easily or rapidly, but he 
moves to far more purpose. Indeed, with- 
out his burden he would not move far at 
all, no matter how swift he might become 
in its absence. 

(Knd it is just that way with us soldiers 
in the long marches and hard-fought cam- 
paigns of life. We are heavily weighted. 
Sometimes we stumble and sink, exhausted 
by the weary road. It seems cruel to pile 
all that load upon us. But the burden 
is part of our efficiency. It is food to 
us, or it is weapon to us, or it is safety to 
us. Sometimes we cannot quite under- 
stand the purpose of all our burden, but 
the great Captain knows, and somewhere 
in the battle we shall have need for every 
pound of it, every ounce. 

So let us square our shoulders to the 
load and — forward march! 



128 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



GETTING USED TO POISONS. 
OR a long time the wise men have 



± known that certain poisons harden the 
body against themselves. The first time a 
boy smokes a cigar, for instance, the 
poison in the tobacco makes him deathly 
sick, but after a while he can puff away 
proudly, with no unpleasant effects — to 
himself, whatever we may say of the 
poor people that must be in the same room 
with him. Of course the poison continues 
to do its deadly work just the same, but 
the boy or the man does not realize it. 

Alcohol is similar. An "old soaker" re- 
quires more and stronger liquor to make 
him drunk than a beginner on the down- 
ward way, though all the time the alcohol 
is killing him. Arsenic, morphine, cocaine, 
and many other poisons act in a similar 
manner. 

But recently it has been definitely proved 
that there are poisons that act in just the 
opposite way. Instead of their apparent 
effects becoming less with each successive 
dose, they become greater. Such a poison 
has been obtained from the sea-anemone. 




COMPARISONS 



129 



Give a dog a very small dose of it, and Le 
will be sick for a few days, and will then 
recover. Then give him a dose only one- 
twentieth of what you gave him before, 
and he will be dangerously sick at once. 
The poison has made the dog more sensi- 
tive to itself. 
f*"~As I read of this I asked myself, "To 
what class of poisons does sin belong?" 

The answer is, of course, "To the first 
class." A sin that would terrify a young 
boy and would be impossible for his pure 
soul becomes, to the man hardened in 
crime, nothing but a matter of course. 

And then I asked myself, "To which 
class of poisons does temptation belong?" 

The answer is, of course, "To the second 
class." Yield to a temptation, and it be- 
comes easier to yield to it the next time. 
Only a whiff of the odor of brandy is 
enough to set a toper's brain on fire. 

And with both, of course, the only safe 
way is to avoid the first dose of the poison. 
The nicotine kind or the sea-anemone kind 
— both are deadly in their time, and the 
fact that one is slow about it and the 
other rapid, that one works under cover 
and the other in the open, makes little 
difference to me. If I am offered my 
choice of a stiletto or a bludgeon, I will 
take — neither. 



130 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



A CERTAIN USE FOR 
LITERATURE. 

WELL-KNOWN dealer in old books 



week of a queer order he once received. 
The customer wanted twelve bundles of 
old magazines, twelve numbers in each 
bundle. The magazines were to be the 
same all the way through, and each bundle 
was to contain the same twelve numbers 
as all the others. It made no difference 
what the magazine might be, or the num- 
bers, provided all the bundles were exactly 
alike. 

The secret of the strange order was this. 
The purchaser intended to try certain sorts 
of cartridges, — he was a dealer in them, — 
and he wanted to measure their penetrat- 
ing power. Therefore he intended to set 
up these bundles of magazines and fire 
away at them. The resistance would be 
the same in every case, since the number 
of pages would be the same and the paper 
would be of precisely the same thickness 
and quality. By noting, therefore, how 
many pages were punctured by each shot 




periodicals was telling me this 



COMPARISONS 



131 



he would have an index of the power of 
each cartridge. It was an ingenious 
method. 

I am especially interested in it because 
it suggests an altogether new use for liter- 
ature. Indeed, there are some magazines, 
and many books, for which this would be 
the most appropriate use. I know nothing 
that can be done with them better than 
this, to tie them up in bundles and pepper 
them with bullets. Some of us have for 
years been firing words at them and 
charges of evil, but we should enjoy hav- 
ing a shot at them with actual powder 
and ball. It would not be an auto da fe, 
but it would be a polite and wholly justi- 
fied modern substitute for that custom of 
the olden days. 



132 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



CATCH YOUR BOLTS. 

SOME workmen were repairing the Bos- 
ton Elevated Railway. One of them 
took a red-hot bolt in his pincers and 
threw it up to another workman, who was 
to place it in the hole drilled for it. The 
second workman failed to catch it, and it 
fell to the street below. There it struck 
a truck-load of twenty bales of cotton, a 
thousand dollars' worth, that was passing 
at the moment. The cotton instantly took 
fire, but the driver knew nothing of it. 
The flames had made considerable head- 
way when the cries of the onlookers in- 
formed the driver of what was going on. 
He had only enough time to leap out of 
the way of the flames and save his horse. 
The Boston fire department was summoned 
and put out the fire. 

This is a fair sample of what happens 
every time one of us workmen on the great 
edifice of human society misses a bolt that 
is thrown to him. They are many — these 
bolts — and they come thick and fast. They 
are red-hot, too, for they are duties that 
are in imperative need of getting done. If 



COMPARISONS 



133 



they are not at once stuck into the proper 
hole, and the top at once flattened out by 
sturdy blows, they grow cool and useless. 
They cannot be put into the structure ; 
or, if we go ahead and hammer them in, 
they are not tight and they may bring- 
about disaster. 

No, there is nothing for it but to catch 
the bolts on the fly. Let one fall, and 
some one gets hurt — or some thing, which, 
in the end, means some one. The streets 
are crowded. It may be a bale of cotton. 
It is quite as likely to be a mass of hair 
with a head underneath it. No one knows 
what will be hit when a worker misses a 
red-hot duty that comes flying at him. 

There is only one safety for the work- 
man or for the rest of us: Catch them! 



134 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



HOLDING THE LANGUAGE. 

A YOUNG professor was talking with 
me the other day and giving his expe- 
riences in the University of Berlin, from 
which he had just come. He had found 
considerable difficulty in learning German 
well enough to understand his teachers in 
the classroom ; but he had been fortunate 
enough to get into a boarding-house where 
only German was spoken, so that his prog- 
ress in the language was, in a sense, 
forced upon him. 

He went to Germany with only college 
German, not at all sufficient for conversa- 
tion ; but in a few months he became able 
to speak and understand the language quite 
readily. He reserved Sunday for visiting 
his English-speaking friends, and upon that 
day alone he allowed himself to lapse again 
into his native tongue. He always found 
that on Monday he was unable to speak 
and understand German as well as before 
Sunday. By the next Saturday he would 
recover his knowledge, but the Sunday in- 
terval of English always caused some of 
it to slip away. 

I spoke to the professor of Hamerton's 



COMPARISONS 



135 



boy, who in early childhood, living in Scot- 
land, understood Gaelic, but, being sent 
to the south of France, the lad picked up 
Provencal in three months so thoroughly 
that he not only forgot his Gaelic, but 
was absolutely unable to speak English, 
and could not talk with his father when he 
came on a visit. Later, removing to the 
north of France, the boy in a few weeks 
forgot all his Provencal and became able 
to speak nothing but French. Indeed, 
Hamerton contends that it is not possible 
for a person to speak perfectly more than 
one language at a time. 

This consideration has set me to think- 
ing about the language of heaven. For 
there is a language of heaven, spoken upon 
earth, quite distinct from any language of 
earth. It employs the words of earthly 
languages, but it is a different tongue, for 
the spirit is entirely different. It is to 
be heard sometimes in prayer meeting, but 
not in all prayer meetings. It is to be 
heard when aged saints hold converse with 
God in prayer. It is to be heard when 
two sincere and open Christians talk con- 
fidingly to each other out of their inmost 
hearts. When it is heard, it is perceived 
at once to be a new language, and a very 
beautiful one. 

Is it possible to speak this language for 
part of the week, say on Sunday, and an 



136 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



earth-language for the rest of the week? 
Not to perfection. If any one would speak 
it well, he must speak it all the time. He 
must allow it to drive out all other lan- 
guage. That is the preparation, and the 
only wise preparation, for speaking it in 
heaven. 



COMPARISONS 



137 



SIX-O'CLOCK MEN. 

THE people of Suffolk County, England, 
are in the habit of speaking of "six- 
o'clock folk." The expression is puzzling 
to those that are not to the manor born, 
and an explanation has to be obtained. The 
words are found to mean "upright folk," 
people that are straight up and down, as 
are the hands of a clock at six. 

It is good to live in a community of six 
o'clock folk. They are dependable people. 
They are not one thing to-day and a differ- 
ent thing to-morrow. They can be trusted 
in the dark as well as in the light. The 
"straight" people are pleasant to live with 
as well as to look at. 

But there is another possible meaning 
for "six-o'clock men." It may mean men 
that get up at six o'clock, early-rising men, 
men of energy. To be sure, six o'clock is 
not a particularly early hour for rising. I 
should call it quite late in my own prac- 
tice. And yet, if a man gets up regularly 
at six winter and summer, he does fairly 
well, and he may be counted upon to keep 
the wolf from the door and make a de- 



138 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



cent way in the world. That sort of folk 
is a good sort to live with. 

And I think of still another possible in- 
terpretation of "six-o'clock men." Six 
o'clock is the half-way time. It is neither 
high noon nor midnight, but just half-way 
between. And six-o'clock people may be 
said to be those comfortable, mediocre men 
that are not geniuses, and they know it, 
nor dullards, and they know that, but sim- 
ply good average people, sensible, plodding, 
contented, and efficient. And that kind is a 
good kind to live with. 

Commend me, therefore, to six-o'clock 
men. They will not "strike twelve" even 
once in their lives, but they are a delight- 
ful set of people just the same. 



COMPARISONS 



139 



A STRONG-BOX THAT WAS TOO 
STRONG. 

LAST week a man in Boston, seventy- 
five years old, went to a safe-deposit 
vault to look up some business papers. He 
was a rich man, a director of a number of 
companies. While he was searching for 
the papers, a strong-box, weighing six hun- 
dred pounds, fell from its shelf above him 
and threw him to the floor. A doctor was 
called at once, but before he could get 
there the old gentleman had expired. 

It is not often that wealth kills a man 
in this way, but in other ways it often 
happens. Many a man's fortune is placed 
in a strong-box over his head, and hangs 
there by an insecure fastening ready to 
fall upon him and crush him. Some men 
go about the world with the knowledge 
that this terrible possibility is impending. 
Most men that are threatened by it are 
entirely ignorant of it. 

(Few men to whom their wealth is a 
peril are conscious that it is a peril. They 
have become hardened to the danger by 
degrees. When they began life, the strong- 



140 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



box was very small and very iight. If it 
fell, it would hardly harm a fly. But the 
box has grown with the passing of the 
years, — grown both in size and in weight, — 
till at last it has many times the weight of 
a man and can easily crush a man under 
its deadly mass. 

How foolish men are to live in such haz- 
ard when they might so easily "stand 
from under" ! 

"So easily," did I say? Ah, but suppose 
the soul has rooted itself right beneath that 
strong-box. 



COMPARISONS 



141 



ITS HEART IN ITS SONG. 

IF it were on an authority less reliable 
than Country Life, I should not believe 
it, but that periodical is to be trusted. It 
says that the nightingale, when it sings, is 
wholly absorbed in the beautiful music it 
makes. No matter what happens around 
it, the bird sings on. The writer of the 
article referred to even believes that the 
bird sings in the dusk with its eyes shut, 
and gives as a reason for his belief the 
experiment he made of stealing within a 
few yards of where a nightingale was 
singing one night, and then silently strik- 
ing" a match. The bird, he declares, sang 
serenely on, without dropping a note. 

Good for the sweet singer ! That is 
the way to sing. Songs that are thus 
sung, whether by avian or by human 
poets, will always be heard. 

And that is the way to do any piece 
of work, whether it is poetry or prose, a 
nightingale's song at twilight, or the dig- 
ging of a ditch at noon. Become so inter- 
ested in your task that nothing short of 
an earthquake will distract your attention 



142 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



away from it. Throw your whole soul 
into it, and not merely the outer edge of 
your soul. Put your whole mind upon it, 
and not merely two or three convolutions 
of your brain. Get so deaf to the noises 
of men that you can do the work as well 
in a boiler-factory as in the centre of a 
thousand-acre farm. Pay no more heed to 
interruptions than a cannon-ball would. 
While you are at your task make yourself 
to all purposes alone in the world with it. 

Men that can do that are masters of 
the situation. Men that cannot do it, but 
must have a thousand preliminaries of 
surroundings, equipment, and conditions 
before they can do any work, are at the 
mercy of every wind that blows. Their 
failure in this distracting world is certain 
and swift. The only victory for the la- 
borer comes along the line of courageous 
independence. 



COMPARISONS 



143 



HARMLESS DUELLING? 

THERE is in Paris a club of queer 
fellows whose purpose is to promote 
what is called harmless duelling. It is 
considered a fine sport, and the members 
are very enthusiastic over it. 

The persons that engage in this truly 
modern form of duelling use ice-cold pistols 
and frozen wax bullets. They wear over 
their clothes a slight protection and on 
their heads a mask something like a diver's 
helmet. The wax bullets simply flatten out 
upon the person that is hit, and do no 
damage. The points of the game are made 
according to the places where the players 
are hit, the wounds being theoretically 
slight, or dangerous, or fatal, as the case 
may be — but only theoretically. A player 
may be technically dead, yet walk off and 
enjoy a good dinner. 

Well, this sport may perhaps promote 
peace in a land where the duel still exists. 
It may prove a harmless vent for the 
duelling instinct. But I doubt it. 

Rather it seems to me that the very 
opposite would be the case. Men that be- 
come expert at "killing" one another in 
fun will not be so likely to hesitate before 



144 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



giving a challenge to a real duel when their 
anger is roused. 

If a man has rheumatism from too much 
beef, it is not best to feed him veal, but 
vegetables. If a girl is stage-struck, it is 
not best to seek to win her from the thea- 
tre by one-man impersonations, but by 
games of tennis. If I wanted to cure a 
gambler, I should not ask him to play any 
card game, however innocent. 

Wounding and killing are sins, when 
they are in earnest ; they are unwise, to 
say the least, when they are only pretences. 
Never imitate an act in fun if you do not 
want to do the deed in earnest. 



COMPARISONS 



145 



LIVING WATER. 

THERE are in our West numbers of 
desert stretches like the famous Death 
Valley in Nevada. In making one's way 
across these dreary wastes one of the 
chief perils, or, at any rate, the chief dis- 
comfort, arises from thirst. Water is 
very scarce, and thirst under the burn- 
ing sun comes to be maddening. 

When the traveller is in such a con- 
dition, ready almost to barter his soul for 
a good drink of water, he is likely to come 
across some shallow pool filled with a 
sparkling liquid that is as clear and beau- 
tiful as if it were just distilled from the 
snows of Mt. Blanc. It is just what he 
has been looking for. It seems purity it- 
self. He stoops down eagerly to drink 
his fill. 

Well for him if at that moment some 
more experienced traveller is at hand to 
pull him back from the tempting draught. 
If he drinks of it, severe sickness and al- 
most certain death will be his immediate 
fate. For that pool is heavily charged 
with arsenic. 

But if, on the other hand, the traveller 



146 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



finds a pool of foul-appearing water, water 
that is full of worms and bugs and snakes, 
most repulsive to the eye and forbidding 
to the taste, that water may be drunk with 
safety. Lie down flat upon the burning 
sands and fill yourself with it, not stop- 
ping to strain out the worms. For, since 
the insects and snakes are alive in it, it 
is healthful for you also. 

And all of this is as true for Broadway. 
New York, and State Street, Chicago, as 
for Death Valley in Nevada. "Living 
water," the water of life, is not of neces- 
sity fair to the eye and pleasant to the 
taste. It may appear muddy and forbid- 
ding. The Christian activities, the way 
of life that is life indeed, may not seem 
half so attractive as the ways that take 
hold on death. 

But watch a little. Stop and think. 
Is life here? Or is not this sparkle and 
clearness, this wonderful brightness and 
transparency, only conclusive proof of the 
absence of life and the presence of death? 
For life tramples and crowds and stains 
and muddies. Water that is used stirs up 
the bottom. Where there is life there is 
many a failure, many a sorrow, many a 
fear. But there is life there and what 
ministers to life, which is endlessly better 
than the most beautiful mask that death 
can wear. 



COMPARISONS 



147 



WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL IT. 

A MAN is very likely to think that 
when his body hurts him he is sick, 
and when it does not hurt him he is well. 
That is usually the case, and so he falls 
into the habit of considering pain as 
equivalent to disease. 

On the contrary, pain is almost always 
only a symptom of disease. The pain may 
go and the disease may remain. Indeed, 
sometimes the disappearance of the pain 
points to a rapid advance in the progress 
of the disease. 

Of course if the sick man is shown by 
other improvements, as in the condition of 
the vital organs, to be on the road to re- 
covery, then the passing of the pain is a 
most hopeful sign ; but sometimes the re- 
verse is the case. 

If the pain was caused by a cramp, then 
the end of the pain, however sudden, is 
a delight to every one concerned. This 
is true also of the cessation of pain when 
a foreign substance leaves a channel of 
the body which it has been clogging. But 
the end of the pain may be brought about 
by a hemorrhage, or by the bursting of 
a cavity that has been forming, or by a 



14S 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



sort of intoxication brought about by a 
retention in the body of poisonous matter. 
In such cases the sick man is really in a 
dangerous condition, but he feels suddenly 
quite well and happy. 

How close together are the soul and 
the body ! Every word I have written 
may be transferred, just as it stands, to 
the spiritual diseases under which men 
suffer. Uneasiness, grief, even despair 
over sin. are bad only because they point 
to the fact of sin. If the sin remains, and 
they disappear, the sinner is a thousand 
times worse off. He has lost the sentinel 
of his soul. He has poisoned it to death. 



COMPARISONS 



149 



BUILDING TO THE LINE. 

New Rochelle, N. Y., has in progress 
a lawsuit that interests me. A tele- 
phone company bought land from a cer- 
tain Judge Levison, and then put up a 
building which extended clear to the 
boundary of the land, neglecting to pro- 
vide any space for light and air. Judge 
Levison also owns the land next to the 
back of the building, which is vacant and 
which furnishes all the light and air for 
the rooms in which about fifty operators 
and clerks are at work. Now Judge Levi- 
son wants the telephone company to pay 
him an annual rental for the use of this 
light and air, and the company refuses, 
but offers instead a lump sum. To com- 
pel payment according to his terms, Judge 
Levison has built upon his land close to 
the windows of the telephone company a 
barricade of galvanized iron sheets held in 
place by long beams. This barricade shuts 
out the light and air, and the telephone 
company is using electric light and breath- 
ing its old air over again. 

I am interested in this matter from the 
legal viewpoint, but also from its applica- 



150 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



tion to our every-day living. For all of 
us, whether we own any real estate or 
not, are occupants of lands in the great 
estate of life. It is possible for us to 
build up to the limit, and to crowd our 
allotment of time quite full with the brick 
and mortar of worldly tasks. We may be 
so intent upon "making a living" that we 
may quite forget to live. We may quite 
leave out of our reckoning the light and 
air which are necessary if we are to do 
any worth-while w T ork in the world very 
long. 

This light and air are the higher things 
of life, the religion and music and art 
and social companionship which brighten 
life and sweeten it and fill it with vital- 
ity. We can get along without them after 
a fashion, but it is a half-hearted sort of 
living while we are in this world, and it 
makes no provision whatever for the life 
beyond this life. 

And so when you plan your life-build- 
ing leave abundant room for air and light. 
Do not crowd it to the line. For if you 
do, the stern laws of nature will be sure 
to raise an iron barricade, and the beau- 
tiful sky and the fresh breeze will be shut 
entirely* out of your days. 



COMPARISONS 



151 



LANGUAGE LEAVE. 

SOME folks have been bringing to light 
the alleged fact that there are fewer 
officers in the army of the United States 
that speak a foreign language than in any 
other army in the world. This is natural 
when one considers the isolated position of 
our country. Other nations have foreign 
languages almost thrust upon them by 
contiguity. 

One of the army captains has suggested 
that certain officers of high standing be 
given "a language leave of absence" for a 
year, and be sent to foreign countries to 
learn the tongues of those lands. Inci- 
dentally they could improve their military 
education in many other ways, but the 
language drill would be the main object. 

It is not at once apparent to an out- 
sider precisely what use an army officer 
would make of his extra language, if he 
had one. Of course, in the case of foreign 
wars, innumerable cases would come up in 
which it would be necessary to deal with 
the people of that land, and the interven- 
tion of interpreters would be troublesome 
and even dangerous. There are also for- 
eign-born soldiers in our own army with 



152 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



whom it might be an advantage to deal in 
their own languages at times. The read- 
ing of foreign books and periodicals might 
also be helpful to the officer. These are 
all the advantages I can think of. 

But when I apply the thought to the 
army of King Emmanuel I have no ques- 
tion as to the utility of the idea. If there 
is a soldier in that army that does not 
know the language of the enemy whom he 
is fighting, I recommend for him an im- 
mediate "language leave of absence,'' to 
continue till the language is learned. 

This is because no one can understand 
another man or help him till he knows his 
language. The language of a business man 
is quite different from the language of a 
college professor. The language of a hod- 
carrier is quite different from the language 
of a business man. They may all speak 
English, but they speak different languages 
just the same. 

A common language is a great "point of 
contact," and the "point of contact" is 
the first necessity in all teaching and lead- 
ing. Know how to talk with men. if you 
would influence them. Speak their lan- 
guage, if you would warm their hearts to 
you. And if you cannot do this, get a 
"language leave of absence," and go off 
to the Land of Loving Sympathy till you 
have learned it. 



COMPARISONS 



153 



DEAD HANDS AT THE WHEEL. 

AN automobile was whizzing along 
Ocean Parkway, New York City, one 
night not long ago. It was coming faster 
than twenty miles an hour, and a police- 
man that saw it knew it. He ordered the 
driver to slow down. No attention was 
paid to him. 

It was a bicycle policeman, and at once 
he mounted his wheel, and set out after 
the reckless driver. He followed for many 
blocks and caught up as the machine had 
nearly reached Coney Island. "You are 
under arrest !" he shouted, but the driver 
did not answer. He had a companion who 
had brought the automobile to a stop. 
Not till then was it discovered that the 
driver was dead. From heart disease or 
some similar cause he had perished dur- 
ing that mad race. 

I wonder that this does not happen 
oftener. And I wonder that it does not 
happen in other contrivances than auto- 
mobiles. Indeed, I am not sure that it 
does not happen often when men know 
nothing of it, and perhaps do not learn 
anything of it. 



154 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



For the modern world is rushing along 
so fast that many an institution, many 
a business firm, many a city, and even 
nation, is presided over by some one who 
holds the wheel, to be sure, but in 
hands that are dead. The pace has been 
too much for him. The nerve tension has 
killed him. Of course he still walks the 
earth, still goes to his office, he still holds 
his post, but his subordinates whisper that 
he has "lost his grip," that "his job is 
getting away from him," that "he is a 
. back number." 

There is danger in this to the rest of 
us also — to those that are sitting in the 
automobile back of the driver and to the 
pedestrians and other drivers along the 
road. 

And there would seem to be only one 
remedy for the peril, and that is the sound 
old prescription, "Festina lente" "Make 
haste slowly." Let us write that motto 
on every automobile in the land. 



COMPARISONS 



155 



THE PIGEON-HOLE SNARE. 

YEARS ago some one you know — it 
was John Willis Baer — had in his 
office in our building a roll-top desk, with, 
on top of it, an extension full of pigeon- 
holes, — about forty of them. He took it 
into his head one day to do away with 
that desk and install in its place a broad 
table containing a few drawers. He asked 
me if I would not like the desk and the 
set of pigeon-holes on top, and I jumped 
at the chance. The desk had a few more 
compartments than the one I had been 
using, and there were about forty addi- 
tional pigeon-holes. I was enraptured, as 
Mr. Baer knew I would be. 

Since that time, I assure you, those 
pigeon-holes have been full. What has 
slipped into them no one but an editor 
can realize, because no one but an editor 
knows the vast variety of stuff that an 
editor has an opportunity to accumu- 
late — is compelled to accumulate, almost. 
Indeed, an editor's life is a running fight 
against the on-rushing waves of written 
and printed paper. Letters, manuscripts, 



156 



CALEB COBWEB'S 



papers, clippings, programmes, cards, 
proofs, memoranda, schedules, engrav- 
ings, books — the flood is endless and in- 
sistent. 

And pigeon-holes are so convenient for 
it ! At the end of a long, hard day, with 
a desk still discouragingly littered with all 
sorts of abominable stuff, and with your 
stenographer, however willing, yet needing 
to go home, a happy thought takes posses- 
sion of you — the pigeon-holes ! You rap- 
idly classify that mass. Unanswered let- 
ters pop into one pigeon-hole, unread man- 
uscripts into another, memoranda of arti- 
cles to write into a third, memoranda of 
articles to ask for into a fourth, and so 
on. 

There is so much virtue in classifica- 
tion. The pigeon-holes absorb it all with 
so much alacrity. Your desk looks so 
clean and neat when you are through. 
You shut it up with satisfaction. And 
you open it the next morning with equal 
satisfaction. It is bare of all reproach- 
ing litter. No tasks awaiting you stare 
you in the face. Your mind accommodat- 
ingly passes by the fact that they are hid- 
den away in the pigeon-holes. You enter 
upon the day with a light heart. 

Once this pigeon-hole trick is learned it 
is easily repeated, till it soon grows into 
the pigeon-hole habit. The pigeon-holes 



COMPARISONS 



157 



become crammed. Before long they will 
hold no more. Then it is the turn of the 
drawers, and they also are crowded. Then 
some fine day you wake up to the fact 
that the entire desk is full of postponed 
duties. In dismay you haul out the con- 
tents of a pigeon-hole. With growing dis- 
may you examine it,- and discover accusing 
dates upon the letters, and note the mem- 
oranda that should long ago have been at- 
tended to. Oh, the day of reckoning 
comes to every culprit of the pigeon-hole ! 
Well for him if he grits his teeth, sets 
himself to clearing out those traps for 
sloth, and, after they are cleared out, reso- 
lutely shuts the roll-front down over them 
and throws the key out of the window ! 

That is what I intend to do. No more 
pigeon-holes for me ! No more pigeon- 
holes in my desk — or, if I retain them, 
they shall be used not for tasks but for 
tools. And, more than that, no more 
pigeon-holes in my mind. For it is as 
easy to pigeon-hole a duty in the mind as 
a letter in the desk. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



